Starting Over On Blackberry Lane. Sheila Roberts

but the earning potential was there. They had no kids, no responsibilities, and Griffin’s house wasn’t in a state of perpetual disaster. Life on her side of the fence looked pretty good.

      “Do you think she’s being too picky?” Stef asked.

      “I don’t know. Having been down the divorce road, I’m wondering if there is such a thing as too picky. Better to be sure than be sorry.”

      “But her wedding’s the first of June.”

      “That’s still several weeks away,” Cass pointed out.

      “Maybe I should’ve had the shower closer to the wedding date,” Stef mused. “What if she backs out?”

      It would be so awkward for her friend if she had to return all the presents. Still, Stef had picked the early date because she knew Griffin’s old friends in Oregon were planning a shower for her next month. Starting the celebrations early had seemed like a good idea at the time. Now she wondered if she should’ve delayed the party.

      “Things have a way of working out,” Cass said. “Meanwhile, we’ll party tomorrow and commiserate with you on the work in progress.”

      Stef frowned at the ugly plastic sheet and the mess beyond. This was so...subpar. “Maybe I could switch the shower to Zelda’s.”

      “You can try. But I think you’ll find the party room already booked. I’m pretty sure Charley said something about a fiftieth wedding anniversary dinner for some people from Wenatchee.”

      Stef cast wildly about in her mind. Bailey Black’s tearoom? Except that was normally closed on Sundays, and she didn’t feel comfortable asking Bailey to go to the inconvenience of opening up.

      Here came Brad again, Petey skipping along behind him, hauling the old bedroom curtains she’d planned to donate to Kindness Cupboard. Oh, no. Now what?

      “I’d better go,” she said to Cass. “I don’t know what Brad’s up to, but it doesn’t look good.”

      Cass laughed, then, after assuring her once more that all would be well, let her end the call.

      “What’s with the drapes?” she asked Brad.

      “Camouflage,” he replied. “You were getting rid of them anyway, right?”

      “Right,” she said cautiously.

      “So, it won’t matter if they get wrecked. I’m going to nail them up in front of the plastic. Then no one will see. Brilliant, huh?”

      He was obviously fishing for a compliment, but she was too irritated to admire his manly creativity. Instead she told Petey, “It’s bath time.”

      “I want to help Daddy,” Petey whined.

      “We’ll be done in five minutes. Then I’ll give him his bath,” Brad said. “You go relax.”

      “Okay, fine.” She’d recorded a mystery on the PBS channel. She’d watch that and imagine her husband as the murder victim.

      The corpse had just been discovered when her two boys stopped by the family room on their way to the bathroom (the one that still had a tub). “Take a look,” Brad told her. “It’s not half-bad.”

      She cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

      “Yeah,” he said confidently. But she noticed he took their son and hurried upstairs before she could render a verdict.

      The living room now had tan drapes hanging closed on one side. Okay, maybe someone who used her imagination could pretend the drapes were covering a window.

      Yes, everyone had a window in the middle of her house between one room and another.

      But it beat the plastic curtain. Barely.

      “So, not too bad, huh?” Brad prompted after they’d tucked their son in and kissed him good-night.

      “It’ll have to do,” she said grumpily.

      He put an arm around her. “Come on, Stef—have a heart. Are you going to punish me all night?”

      “I might.”

      “You wanna just kill me and be done with it?”

      With his round face, reddish hair and snub nose, Brad looked like a perpetual teenager. And when he wore that penitent-little-boy expression it was hard to stay mad at him.

      But she was still willing to try. “Yeah. And I know where to hide the body.”

      He frowned. “You’d miss me. Admit it.”

      She sighed heavily. “Promise me this project will get done before I’m eighty.”

      He crossed his heart. “Promise.”

      “Like next weekend?”

      “Petey starts T-ball next Saturday. Remember?”

      And Brad was the team’s coach. “This is never going to get done,” Stef groaned.

      “Don’t worry, Sweet Stuff. It will,” he said and pulled her close. “Now, how about we kiss and...” He waggled his eyebrows.

      “No makeup sex for you,” she said. “Not until I solve my mystery.”

      He grinned. “I can wait.”

      And that was the problem. He was never in a hurry to finish anything. Maybe she should make him wait for sex until he got the great room finished. Of course, if she did that, she wouldn’t have another orgasm until she was seventy.

      Later that night they had some great makeup sex. If only her husband was as good with his other tools. Sigh.

       Chapter Two

      Griffin James finished straightening her hair, then double-checked her makeup. Okay. Done. She went into the living room of the old Craftsman she shared with her fiancé, Steve Redford, and found him still happily streaming his favorite online video game. Busman’s holiday—wasn’t that the saying for doing the same thing on your day off that you did during the rest of the week? There was a reason Steve’s job was perfect for him. He was a gaming addict.

      She stopped by the couch on her way out the door to the shower at Stef’s house. “How do I look?”

      “Good,” he said, never taking his eyes off the TV screen.

      “I dyed my hair purple. What do you think?” she asked, flipping her strawberry blond locks.

      “Yeah, great.”

      She glared at him. “Wanna know how you look?”

      “Good, yeah.” He punched the controls.

      Of course he didn’t. The avatars didn’t care. It was two o’clock on a Sunday afternoon and there he sat in his ratty old T-shirt and pajama bottoms, his hair pulled back in its usual man bun. He hadn’t shaved yet, hadn’t even brushed his teeth. Too busy killing imaginary enemies.

      “I’m leaving now,” she said abruptly. “I’m going to lie down in the bathtub and open a vein.”

      “Have fun.”

      “Steve!”

      He glanced up with a start. “Hey, babe, you look good.”

      Nice of him to finally notice. “Thanks.”

      “See you later,” he said, and his head swiveled back to the TV screen.

      She should have been an avatar. He’d have paid more attention to her. As she walked down the street to Stef’s house, Griffin tried to convince herself that she was excited about this bridal shower, that she was excited about getting married.

      She needed to be excited. She and Steve had been together for five years, ever since her