Taking Back Mary Ellen Black. Lisa Childs

      She shook her head, brown curls dancing around her shoulders. “You saw it coming on your wedding day. You just didn’t want to face it.”

      “So you’ve come to say I told ya so?” I got up the nerve to ask.

      A trace of bitterness passed through her dark eyes. I’d hurt her all those years ago, and she hadn’t deserved it for just being a friend. She sighed. “Where’s the fun in that?”

      “Fun?” There was that word again.

      “Naw, that’s not why I came.”

      Enviously I eyed her tiny figure. Obviously she hadn’t come for the fatty pork chops. “So why did you come?”

      “I was playing bridge at your house—”

      “You were?” I had imagined a group of women closer to Grandma’s age.

      She sighed. “Yeah, Mom suckered me in, and I had a minute. Anyway they sent me to get you.” No doubt she wouldn’t have come for me on her own. Unlike the other old neighbors who had wanted to rub my nose in my misfortune, Jenna hadn’t even cared that much…not after all these years. “We could use another person or two.”

      “For bridge?”

      She glanced toward the back door and lowered her voice. “For poker. You in? I heard you could use the money.”

      Following suit, I lowered my voice. “They play for money?”

      She laughed. “Hell, yes!”

      Damn. Did I know Mom and Grandma at all? Apparently not. “Well…”

      “Or would you rather stay here for all the neighbors to wallow in your misery?”

      “You know about that?”

      “I grew up only a few doors down from here. I know about that.” She’d had her own misery for the neighborhood to wallow in. Her old man hadn’t exactly died from natural causes, unless it was natural for a man to drunkenly fall down his own basement stairs and bust his head open. And then there were the skeptics who had always wondered if Jenna’s mom hadn’t gotten sick of being knocked around and knocked him for once…right down those basement stairs to the unforgiving surface of the concrete floor.

      “So you coming? Or you love working here too much to lose the apron for a couple of hours?” Jenna. Eleven years hadn’t smoothed her sharp edges any, edges she’d no doubt developed to fend off the pitying pats of the neighborhood, for the poor little O’Brien girl.

      Even after all this time, I could be more honest with her than I could be with my family…or sometimes, myself. I lowered my voice more. “I hate working here.”

      “Figured as much. You try to get something else yet?”

      I nodded. “I’ve got an interview at Charlie’s Tavern.”

      “So you like waiting tables? Is that what you want to be when you grow up?”

      “I don’t know what the hell I am now, let alone what I want to be.”

      The amusement left, and concern flooded her eyes. “Ah, Mary Ellen…”

      “Don’t feel sorry for me. I feel sorry enough for myself,” I admitted.

      “And working here isn’t going to help that.” She blew out a breath. “And if you think it’s bad here, Charlie’s is the neighborhood bar. It’ll be worse there. I have a job opening. Mom said I should mention it to you.”

      Jenna had always been close to her mom, even more so after her dad’s death. She was fiercely protective of the woman who’d been through so much. And she never disappointed her. If Mrs. O’Brien hadn’t told her to, Jenna wouldn’t have brought up the job to me. Probably wouldn’t have come to see me at all.

      She hurried to add, “It’s only temporary. My processor— I’m a mortgage loan officer, by the way—”

      Like I didn’t know it. Mom bragged about Jenna as if she was one of her own children. And with the amount of time she’d spent at our house growing up, she very nearly was.

      “Yeah, I know. You’re doing very well.” And I wasn’t jealous, not like I was of Natalie. I’d never begrudge Jenna any of her success because I knew how hard she’d worked for it. She’d always been ambitious, like Eddie. Maybe that was why they’d hated each other; they’d been too much alike. Then. Not now. Because Eddie hadn’t ever achieved what he’d hungered for. Whereas even Jenna’s tailored business suit, a rich burgundy suede, shouted out her success as loudly as my mother did. She looked great, but she shrugged off my compliment.

      “Well, interest rates are good right now, so we’re busy. And my processor, the person who handles all my paperwork to make sure the loan closes, is pregnant. She wants to take it easy. She’ll come back after she has the kid. But she’s as big as a house now and needs to kick back. You in?”

      I blinked. “What? The poker game?”

      “The job, you interested?”

      “Working for you?”

      “It’s crazy, demanding work. But you don’t have to wear that apron.”

      I dragged the offensive garment over my head and tossed it on the counter. Yeah, it was temporary. I was becoming my own temp agency. Someone off with a hip replacement or a maternity leave, send in Mary Ellen Black. But I wouldn’t be handling raw meat. And hopefully I’d make more than quarters and hear a lot less pity over my divorce.

      And maybe while her processor kicked back, I could figure out just exactly what I did want to be when I grew up. Hopefully, she’d be off a long time with this pregnancy and baby, because if I hadn’t figured it out in almost thirty-one years, I didn’t like my chances of figuring it out in six weeks. “Yeah, I’m interested.”

      CHAPTER F

      Friendship

       Jenna nodded as I came around the counter. “And what about the poker game? You in?”

      “Since they’re playing for money, I guess that depends on what you’re paying me,” I hedged.

      She glanced around the small store; we were the only two inside. “Cash, or that creep might sue you for alimony.”

      Just like Jenna, always thinking, even when I wasn’t. Just what the heck did go on inside my head? Only the orchestra of crickets singing?

      “And he would,” Jenna continued. “Creep never deserved you.”

      That was why Jenna and I had stopped being friends. Because of her and Eddie’s mutual animosity, I had had to choose between them, a choice I shouldn’t have had to make. Now it was clear that I shouldn’t have dropped her friendship. “I’m sorry.”

      She shrugged, too proud to admit if I’d hurt her. But pain showed in her dark eyes. “You were knocked up, scared, and pressured by your parents.”

      And she would know that because she’d always known everything about me. “Yeah. And in love. I really loved him. How stupid was that?”

      “Cut yourself a break. It happens to the best of us.”

      “Not you.”

      She lifted her ringless left hand, but a faint indent marred the third finger. “I was.”

      “Was not!” I ignored the pang of hurt over not being invited to her wedding. Why should she have invited me? We hadn’t been talking after my wedding day.

      “Your mom never told you that?”

      “She mentioned something once, but it was around the holidays and she was making rum balls. Mom’s never completely lucid when she’s making rum balls.”

      Jenna chuckled and grabbed my arm, tugging me toward the door. “Mr. Black,