Second Chance Girl (Happily Inc. #2)

Harper went into the kitchen and poured herself another cup of coffee. The back door opened and Harper’s mother walked in. Bunny Bloom was petite, slim and in her early sixties. She dressed in high-end knits, wore her dark hair short and spiky and always, always put on makeup before stepping outside her apartment.

Bunny had lost her husband a couple of years ago, and while Harper had been a mess in the months following her father’s death, Bunny had soldiered on, taking care of what needed doing. Once the dust had settled, she’d moved into the apartment above Harper’s garage both to be close to her only grandchild and to help Harper financially. There were months when Bunny’s thousand-dollar rent check meant the difference between hamburger for dinner instead of a box of mac and cheese. Figuratively, Harper thought as she smiled at her mother. She would never use boxed mac and cheese. She would make it herself...from scratch...including the noodles.

“Hey, Mom. How are you?” Harper asked, automatically pouring a second cup of coffee before pulling a freshly made coffee cake from the bread box and cutting off a slice.

“Old. Have you heard from Becca?”

“Just that they’re planning on heading home tomorrow.” She didn’t mention that since the text two days ago saying her daughter had arrived, she hadn’t heard a word. These days Becca just wasn’t talking to her and for the life of her, Harper couldn’t figure out why.

They settled at the round kitchen table and she gave the plate of coffee cake to her mother. Each of the four matching place mats had a rabbit motif, as did the salt and pepper shakers in the center of the table. The sugar bowl and creamer had rabbits and tulips, celebrating the holiday and the fact that it was spring.

“Good.” Bunny poured cream into her coffee. “I need to see my only grandchild for Easter. Have you started preparing dinner?”

“I have.”

Although no matter how much she prepped, she would spend most of Easter Sunday in a frenzy of cooking. The menu this year included strawberry-avocado salad, a glazed ham, potatoes grand mere, both roasted asparagus and creamy spring peas, along with lemon meringue pie and an Easter bunny cake. Oh, and appetizers.

All that for four people, or possibly six if Lucas came and brought a date. She was never sure with him. Regardless, there would be food for twenty and lots of leftovers. And none of that counted the special “welcome home” dinner she would make tomorrow.

“Do you need help?” her mother asked.

Harper did her best not to scream. Of course she needed help! She was working sixty hours a week in a desperate attempt to stay afloat financially, taking care of her house, dealing with a sixteen-year-old, decorating for the holiday and getting ready to cook a fancy meal. Help would be nice. Help would be grand. But in Bunny’s world, the woman of the house did not ask for help. No, she did it all herself, seemingly effortlessly. Family came first. The measure of a woman was how well she looked after her family and so on. Harper knew it all by heart. The problem was, from her perspective, the only person who cared about all that was Bunny herself. Bunny, who no longer had to do anything for anyone because somehow all that responsibility was Harper’s now. Bunny was free to spend the day with her friends, dress perfectly for every occasion and judge her eldest daughter.

Harper smiled at her mother. “I’m good, Mom. I have it all under control. You just show up and look pretty.”

“All right. Stacey and Kit are coming to dinner?”

“Last I heard.”

Which could be interesting, Harper thought. At some point her sister was going to have to reveal her pregnancy, and wouldn’t that be a conversation starter? She wasn’t sure if she wanted to it happen at Easter dinner, though. Not with all the work that went into the meal. Maybe after would be better, when everyone was still digesting, although that could be problematic, as well.

She supposed the actual issue was there was simply no good time to confess to your mother that you were six months pregnant. At sixteen it made sense to hide the truth, but Stacey was forty.

Harper held in a sigh. She knew exactly why Stacey wasn’t eager to share the information. Their mother would have a million rules and shoulds, all of which Stacey would ignore. Then there would be fighting. Given that scenario, keeping quiet sort of made sense.

“Do you think she left you anything?”

Harper stared at her mother. “I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re asking.”

“Do you think she left you anything?”

“Saying the same thing again doesn’t make it any clearer, Mom.”

Her mother sighed. “In the will.”

Oh, right. Because Bunny would rather buy store-bought bread than actually say Great-Aunt Cheryl’s name. Which would be really funny except Harper had a similar problem with her ex’s girlfriend. She went out of her way to never say “Alicia” if at all possible. Although there was a huge difference, what with Alicia being twenty-eight and gorgeous and Great-Aunt Cheryl not being a relative at all and, well, dead.

“I have no idea,” Harper admitted. “A couple of years ago she asked me if I would take her dogs. I made it clear there was no way.”

Great-Aunt Cheryl had been many things, including a former army nurse who had somehow become a spy after World War II. After that, she’d traveled the world, taken lovers and generally lived a life that would have left anyone else exhausted. In the past decade or so, Great-Aunt Cheryl had taken to training dogs for the government. Harper was pretty sure they could arm a nuclear missile if instructed. They were also huge, slightly scary-looking Dobermans that she in no way wanted in her house.

“So no jewelry? No antique silver tea service?”

“Great-Aunt Cheryl wasn’t the antique-silver-tea-service type.”

“Pity.”

They both knew that wasn’t true.

“I’m not expecting her to leave me anything, Mom. She was Terence’s aunt, not mine.”

“Yet you were always so close.”

There was a slight sniff at the end of the statement, but Harper ignored it.

“We were. She was lovely and I miss her a lot.” Great-Aunt Cheryl had always encouraged her to do more with her life than just take care of her family. When Becca had started kindergarten, Cheryl had offered to pay for Harper to go to college.

Harper, being an idiot, had refused. Why should she take time away from caring for her family to do something as ridiculous as going to college? It wasn’t as if she was ever going to be on her own and having to support herself and her daughter.

After the divorce, Harper had wanted to tell Great-Aunt Cheryl how much she appreciated the offer, even if she hadn’t taken it. But at that point she’d been afraid it would sound too much like begging for money, so she’d never said the words. Now she couldn’t.

Regret was a mean and vindictive bitch.

*

HARPER HEARD A knock at the front door, but before she could run to open it, she heard a familiar “It’s me.”