The Debutante's Second Chance. Liz Flaherty

his first night in the house, Micah gave an impromptu dinner party and Eli, Jessie, Landy and Nancy Burnside came. They laughed, told stories, ate pizza and drank beer. When everyone went home, Micah kissed Nancy and Jessie on the cheek. Landy brought up the rear, and he didn’t kiss her at all, just gave her a long look. After that night, he hardly saw her at all.

      She waved to him across the produce aisle at the grocery store, but by the time he carried his purchases through the checkout, her aged black Chevy was pulling out of the parking lot. He saw her on the River Walk most evenings at dusk, walking as fast as her hitching gait allowed. She and Eli were in and out of each other’s houses, too. Sometimes one of Eli’s numerous and sundry children accompanied her trek around the thumb, and the lapping river water would transmit the sound of her laughter to Micah as he sat on his back porch.

      “I always liked that little girl,” his father said one evening, and Micah looked up to see the setting sun embracing Landy, turning her hair the color of orange marmalade and making his heart ache in a place he hadn’t known was there.

      He thought then about asking her to go to dinner with him, maybe crossing the big bridge into Cincinnati to see a play, but later that night he saw Eli slip through the darkness to her house.

      It was a good match—Eli and Landy. Micah told himself that, but then he sat silent and morose on the porch until he saw Eli go home.

      The “Window Over the Sink” columns arrived in the mail every Friday, and he printed them in Saturday’s Trib. People liked them. “Been there, done that, bought the damn T-shirt,” they told him.

      Plans for the newspaper were working out, coming together faster than he’d thought possible. Advertising and subscriptions were both on an upswing. The town clergymen took turns writing a short, inspirational piece every week. Mrs. Burnside did a rambling twenty inches or so on who was doing what. It was corny, she admitted, writing down when so-and-so’s daughter from Ithaca, New York, visited with her two young sons and spoiled cocker spaniel, but people liked reading it and she had a good time compiling it. Micah liked her writing—and her—so well he offered her the receptionist’s job and she took it, managing his newspaper office as efficiently as she had geometry class. Her coffee was good, too; his entire staff had threatened mutiny when, being the first one in the office one Monday morning, he made the coffee.

      “This stuff,” said Joe Carter mildly, “gives sludge a bad name.” So Nancy made the coffee.

      “Window Over the Sink” was the most popular of the columns, drawing the most reader comment. Everyone had his own idea of who Susan was, ranging from Jenny from the café to Micah’s father—an idea that horrified Ethan. Micah had even looked at the back of one of the newspaper’s checks that had been issued to Susan Billings, to see if her signature looked familiar. But the check was stamped with For Deposit Only and had been cashed without question at a local bank.

      Micah considered for a while that the writer might be Landy. In the end, he didn’t think so, because she had no children and her high-school heartthrob was dead. Susan wrote with a lightness of spirit that had left Landy one night on the stairs of her grandmother’s house.

      He didn’t really know what Landy did, though. She worked at the realty sometimes, but not often. She substitute-taught everything from kindergarten to senior English and occasionally waited tables during the lunch rush Down at Jenny’s. She volunteered everywhere, clerking for the blood drive, reading aloud at Wee Care Preschool, and delivering Meals on Wheels.

      He saw her in church, in the same pew as Jessie Titus Browning with Jessie’s three children lined up between them. Sometimes, Landy wasn’t at the service, and he wondered where she was until one Sunday he went to the basement restroom and found her presiding over the nursery.

      When he caught sight of her that Sunday, Micah stood in the door of the big room that housed the nursery, not noticing the cribs, the changing table or the miniature table and chairs. Not even really seeing the six or seven preschoolers milling around the room.

      He saw only Landy, standing with a baby on her hip. She swayed gently, crooning into the ear of the sobbing infant. Watching her, he remembered something his father had said once. “Equal rights or no, there’s nothing in the world any prettier than a woman with a baby in her arms.”

      Pop had been right.

      The woman looked up and saw him then, and smiled. “Good morning,” she said. “Here.”

      Before he knew what was happening, she had plunked the weeping baby in his arms and was rummaging in a cupboard. “These kids are starving to death. They know they get treats down here, and Colby—he’s the one you’re holding—has kept me so busy I’m behind.”

      “Okay.” Micah looked down at the wizened little face of the baby. “I’ll try not to drop you if you’ll quit crying, how does that sound?”

      He stepped carefully between the toys that littered the carpeted floor and sat in a rocking chair, propping Colby up on his shoulder the way he’d seen countless women do. It couldn’t be that hard, could it? The baby smelled good, and Micah breathed deep.

      Landy handed out disgusting-looking fruit things to the children and began pouring juice out of a can into paper cups. “Sing to him,” she suggested over her shoulder. “He likes it.”

      “You think so, huh,” he grunted, but when Colby’s whimpers became sobs again, he began to sing “Yellow Submarine” in a low voice.

      Pretty soon, Colby stopped crying, and by the time Micah had finished “Hey, Jude” and was halfway through “A Hard Day’s Night,” the other children were quiet, too. They sat cross-legged on the floor and listened.

      “That’s classical music, my dad says,” commented Lindsey, Eli’s youngest. “My brother Max says it’s just old.”

      The snort of laughter from the woman leaning against a changing table made Micah glad he’d come down the stairs, even though his hand was asleep and Colby’s diaper had sprung a definite leak.

      “Would you have dinner with me tonight?” he asked, not caring that all the children heard him and Lindsey was probably going to report to her father that his friend Micah was asking Landy for a date.

      Landy started, and her cheeks turned pink, but she was smiling again when she answered. “Sure, if you’ll sing ‘Twist and Shout.’ I always liked that.”

      

      “It’s a date, Jess. What in the hell am I doing going on a date?” Clad in white cotton underwear, Landy paced between her closet and dressing table, so distracted that she didn’t even think about her leg.

      “Driving yourself crazy, I’d say,” said Jessie, “and it’s about time.”

      “He just looked so sweet, holding Colby and singing, I couldn’t say no. But Blake used to be sweet, too, and if I’d said no more often, he’d probably still be alive.”

      “Landy—”

      “It’s true. Don’t try and tell me it’s not.” Landy reached for the cup of tea that sat cooling on a table.

      “Okay, I won’t. But maybe if I’d told somebody the first time he ever hit you—after you smiled at Micah and told him good game—Blake would still be alive. Maybe if his parents hadn’t blinded themselves to his violence, he’d still be alive. Maybe if the steps in your grandma’s house hadn’t been so steep, there wouldn’t have been time for the gun to go off and he’d still be alive.” Jessie’s normally soft brown eyes snapped. “You going to live the rest of your life on maybes?”

      Landy got up, going back to her closet. “Maybe,” she said over her shoulder, and laughed when Jessie raised one finger in a universal gesture.

      “Wear a dress.” Jessie poured more tea.

      “Oh, Jess, I don’t think so.” Landy looked down at the scars left by the surgeries on her leg. “This doesn’t look too pretty.”

      Their