Taken In (5 page)

“I’m so sorry,” Tori said, her gaze moving past the woman, past the tape line, and toward the vicinity of the policeman speaking to Leona on the other side of the street, an inexplicable chill making its way through her body as she did. “Is there anything we can—”

“I know I shouldn’t be surprised. It was only a matter of time before one of those women wised up to his ways and exacted revenge.”

She saw Leona point up to the balcony in question, watched as the cop nodded in response, and then swallowed hard as her friend dropped her chin to her chest.

Uh-oh.

“Did you know his name?” Tori asked despite the eerie feeling she already knew the answer.

“Dreyer. John Dreyer.”

Tori pulled Dixie’s door shut and ventured into the sitting area of their pricey suite, the helplessness she’d felt while comforting her nemesis-turned-friend finally taking its toll.

“How is she?” Margaret Louise asked, patting the vacant yet narrow cushion beside her own wide frame.

Accepting the invitation, Tori sank onto the cozy sofa and released the breath she’d been holding for entirely too long. “I wasn’t sure it was ever going to happen, but she finally fell asleep.”

Debbie
tsk
ed softly under her breath. “We hated hearing her cry the way she was. Somehow crying and Dixie don’t go together very well.”

Tori rested her head against the sofa back and closed her eyes. “No. They don’t.”

“Victoria, why don’t you head on into bed now yourself?” Debbie reached across the end table that separated her chair from the sofa and patted Tori’s shoulder. “You must be exhausted after being up all night with Dixie.”

She forced her eyes open, shaking her head as she did. “No, I’ll be fine. Our show is going to air in”—she peeked at her watch through the sleepy haze—“ten minutes. I don’t want to miss that.”

“It’s a shame Dixie will miss it.” Beatrice worried her bottom lip between her teeth.

“Melissa is tapin’ it at home so Dixie can watch it then,” Margaret Louise offered. “When she’s feelin’ better.”

“Think we’ll ever see her smile again the way she did over that breakfast table yesterday morning?”

“I sure hope so, Beatrice.” Margaret Louise lifted the remote control from the coffee table and aimed it at the flat screen television on the other side of the room. “But I’ll tell you what. This whole thing shores up what my daddy used to say.”

Rose shuffled through the bathroom door. “What’s that?”

“One day you’re drinkin’ wine, the next day you’re pickin’ grapes.”

Leona, who’d remained silent to that point, shifted on the love seat that sat at an angle to the sofa. “What’s that one you always say about owning up to your mistakes sooner rather than later?”

“The easiest way to eat crow is while it’s still warm, ’cause the colder it gets, the harder it is to swallow? Is that the one, Twin?”

Leona nodded. “That’s one you need to share with Dixie when she wakes up.”

All eyes turned toward Margaret Louise’s flawlessly dressed sister. Rose was the first to speak. “Why on earth does Dixie need to hear that?”

“Because she needs to realize that whoever pushed John off that balcony did her a favor.”

Debbie’s gasp mingled with Beatrice’s. “Leona!”

“Oh, here we go again—the matches are being readied.” Then, before anyone could ask what she meant, Leona continued, her voice a study in boredom. “Go ahead. Burn me at the stake. What else is new?”

Tori held off the torrent of anger from her fellow sewing sisters with the palm of her hand and addressed Leona. “Did you not hear Dixie sobbing all night?”

Leona brought her own hand toward her face for a quick inspection of her nails. “How could I not?”

“Did you not see how beautiful her smile was yesterday as she sat across from that man over breakfast?”

Slowly, Leona lowered her hand, bringing her gaze to rest squarely on Tori’s. “You know I did, dear.”

“Then how can you sit there and say what she’s going through is for the best? And imply, in a not-so-disguised way, that she had it coming to her?” She heard the anger in her voice, yet had no desire to try and soften it. Leona was out of line. “Dixie is devastated.”

“That’s because she doesn’t know the whole story yet and she thinks she’s truly heartbroken. But she’s not. Not in the way she would have been if John had been able to continue down his all-too-familiar path.”

“Familiar path?” Beatrice echoed.

Leona’s gaze shifted to the nanny, but her words, her tone, made it obvious she was addressing them all. “The one that had him
using
Dixie while making her think she meant something.”

Rose pointed a bony finger at Leona. “When will you realize you’re not the only woman capable of being admired by a man?”

“You think that’s what this is about, you old goat?”

“I
know
that’s what this is about. It’s all anything is ever about where you’re concerned, Leona Elkin.” Rose lowered herself onto the couch and pulled the flaps of her sweater more closely against her body. “You can’t handle the fact that someone who once found you attractive found Dixie to be attractive, too.”

“Heck, I reckon he even found parts of me, and Beatrice, and you attractive, too, Rose, now didn’t he?” Margaret Louise puffed her chest out with pride then returned her focus to the television and the channel she’d just located. “It’s time for all y’all to hush now.
Taped with Melly and Kenneth
is ’bout to start!”

For a moment, Tori wasn’t entirely sure the promise of watching their segment on a nationally syndicated talk show was enough to call a cease-fire in the ongoing war of glares between Rose and Leona, but eventually it was, Leona’s eye roll and Rose’s answering snort serving as the parting shot from both sides. Yet even as they reluctantly turned toward the television, Tori couldn’t help but spend a few extra moments picking through Leona’s words and comparing them to those of John’s downstairs neighbor.

“Today on
Taped with Melly and Kenneth
, we’ll be looking for and finding love in all the right places—in your kitchen, on your next date, with the help of a blockbuster book, and even down south, where the love between friends knows no bounds.”

Margaret Louise clapped her hands together, nearly drowning out Debbie and Beatrice’s collective squeal. “You hear that? That down south part? I bet they’re talkin’ ’bout us!”

“You really think so, Margaret Louise? Because from where I’m sitting, I see lots of boundaries in our group,” Leona snipped. “And they’re always stacked at
my
feet.”

“Do us a favor then and trip on them, will you?” Then before anyone could speak, Rose pointed at the television as the camera panned in to reveal the show’s hosts seated behind their opening segment table. “Here we go . . .”

Twenty minutes later, after much chitchat and crazy antics, the hosts turned to the interview portion of their show. “Kenneth and I are delighted to have Gavin Rollins on the show today to talk about his blockbuster sensation,
Finding Love After Sixty-Five
. C’mon out here, Gavin!”

“Now wait just a cotton-pickin’ moment,” Margaret Louise said. “That fella’ came
after
us yesterday.”

Leona rolled her eyes skyward. “And they put him before us today. That’s why it’s
taped
, Margaret Louise. So they can make changes and edit before it’s put on the air.” Then, lifting Paris onto her lap, she addressed her furry bunny with a second dose of boredom. “Is it any wonder why
I’m
the one who has her own cable television program debuting in the fall?”

“Shut your pie hole, Twin.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself, Margaret Louise.” Rose shot a defiant look in Leona’s direction, then returned her focus to the screen in time to see Gavin Rollins appear in the guest chair to Melly’s right. “Now listen up, everyone.”

They leaned forward in their respective chairs, their attention riveted on the screen as the man they’d chatted with over sandwiches and fruit salad in the studio’s Green Room prior to the show took his turn in front of the camera.

“Welcome to the show, Gavin.” Melly picked the man’s book off her lap and held it up. “I have to say, Gavin, you make the prospect of finding love after sixty-five sound both scary and possible.”

“And that’s because it’s both.” Gavin settled into his high-back stool, unbuttoning his suit coat as he did. “But my book,
Finding Love After Sixty-Five
, can show you how to avoid the first in order to achieve the second.”

Kenneth puffed out his expansive linebacker chest and leaned forward. “I have to tell you, Gavin, if someone took advantage of my mother’s vulnerabilities the way you speak of in your book, I’d be locked up.”

Melly’s eyes widened. “I know, right?” Then, turning to the guest, she indicated the book once again. “We’d be naïve if we didn’t realize there are scam artists in this world. They come out of the woodwork when there’s a national disaster or tragedy in the hope they can prosper off others’ misery. But to scam an elderly woman who’s looking for love? It just blows my mind.”

“They’re out there,” Gavin said, nodding, his emerald green eyes looking out at the audience. “And what makes them particularly dangerous is that it’s a rare occasion to find one of their victims who will speak up.”

Kenneth raked a hand down his face. “I read that in your book and it made me mad all over again. I mean, what would a seventy- or eighty-something have to be embarrassed about in that situation? They weren’t the louse.”

“We’re all just kids at heart, that’s why,” Melly mused. “Who wants to admit they were duped at the prom? Or stood up at the altar? It’s humiliating.” Then with a sideways glance at her co-host, she took a moment to bring the point home for their viewers. “Were you ever duped in love, Kenneth?”

“I plead the Fifth.”

Melly gestured toward the guest. “Which backs up your point, doesn’t it, Gavin?”

“It does, indeed. But as my mother always said, to be forewarned is to be forearmed. I don’t want to see anyone’s heart broken by con artists. It’s part of the reason I wrote this book in the first place.”

“And the other part?” Melly prompted.

“To give people hope for life’s next chapter. A chapter that doesn’t have to be lived alone.”

Tori glanced around the room at her friends, three of the five women present falling into Gavin Rollins’s target demographic. And sure enough, each one of them sported a version of the same look—hope.

On Margaret Louise’s face, that hope was for someone else, like Rose or Georgina. After all,
her
life as a long-widowed woman with a grown son and eight beloved grandchildren was full enough.

On Rose’s face, the hope took on an almost wistful quality. As if being in her mid-eighties put any chance of finding a mate just out of reach.

And on Leona, the hope was clothed in longstanding confidence. Leona knew there was romance after sixty-five. And in her world, it was more a given than a hope.

Tori closed her eyes against the image of Dixie that came next—the hope her friend had worn prior to the news of John’s death making her heart ache. It was as if she’d witnessed firsthand the obliteration of Dixie’s hope and joy.

She swallowed once, twice, then forced her eyes to open, to focus on the television screen as Melly asked viewers to stay with them as they went to commercial, the promise of a “friendship tale like no other” upping the excitement in the room in short order.

“We’re next!” Margaret Louise linked hands with Beatrice and Debbie and smiled triumphantly. “We’re next! Can you believe it?”

Sure enough, after a handful of commercials, Melly and Kenneth appeared on the screen once again, with Melly’s voice coming from the speakers on either side.

“My name is Margaret Louise Davis and I’m writing to you from Sweet Briar, South Carolina. When people think of friends, they picture folks of the same age—jogging together, going to movies together, and talking on the phone for hours. But when I think of my friends—my
best
friends—I see something very different. Some of us have been married and widowed, some of us are retired and looking for hobbies to keep us busy, some of us work full-time while juggling motherhood, and some of us are really just starting out, choosing paths the rest of us traveled a lifetime ago. We shouldn’t work as friends, but we do. And it all started with a sewing needle—a sewing needle we each picked up for very different reasons.”

Then, one by one, Melly and Kenneth introduced them to the audience—the sound of applause holding steady as Tori, Margaret Louise, and the rest of the gang made their way onto the stage. The questions they were each asked and the answers they each gave were exactly the way Tori remembered them from the day before, yet somehow, watching the interview as a spectator rather than a participant made it all the more poignant.

There, in front of her face, were some of the most important people in her life. People who had opened their arms to her at a time she needed it most. People she’d known only a little over two years, yet felt as if she’d known a lifetime.

There was Margaret Louise, her trusted confidante and sidekick . . .

There was Debbie, the kindhearted entrepreneur and mother of two who unknowingly made Tori strive to be better—a better librarian, a better fiancée, a better friend . . .

There was Beatrice, her quiet friend who reminded her that listening was every bit as important as talking . . .

There was Rose, who touched her heart in a way it hadn’t been touched since her great-grandmother had been alive . . .

There was Leona, who kept her on her toes and made her laugh even when that wasn’t the intention . . .

And there was Dixie, the woman who’d singlehandedly taught her that blue skies were behind every dark cloud . . .