Free Second Chance Love by Shawn Inmon Page A

soon. This is the second evening we’ve spent together after twenty years apart, and you’re asking me to go on a romantic weekend at a fancy B&B? No. Thank you for the thought, but no.”
    Steve leaned back in his chair, flummoxed, when Jim Scott rescued him. “Steve, the mayor is waving us over. We really need his support on that zoning issue.”
    Steve scowled, then nodded. He leaned first toward Elizabeth. “Lizzie, we can talk about it later. If you don’t want to go with me, you don’t have to. I just wanted us to have a chance to get away by ourselves for a few days, and enjoy the peace and quiet. I’m sorry, I’ve got to go talk to the mayor for just a minute. I’ll be right back.”
    “Fine,” Elizabeth said, meaning it. She turned to talk to Helen Scott, but saw that she was gone, too, leaving Elizabeth alone at the table.
    “Okay, folks,” Thom Goodson said, “that’s it for the first half of the auction. We’re already nearing a record for money raised and we’re only halfway through. I’m going to go wet my whistle, and in fifteen minutes we’ll have the second half of the live auction. In the meantime, don’t forget to check out all the wonderful items up for bid in the silent auction!”
    The band started to play a soft melody, attracting no attention. A hum of conversation rose around her. Behind her, she heard one voice pitched slightly above the others saying… “and did you see that dress she was wearing? I almost died. It looked like something Linda Evans would have worn on Dynasty. Hello, 1980s! I didn’t know they even sold dresses like that anymore, except maybe at Goodwill.”
    Elizabeth had always had exceptional hearing. Chelsea. Another feminine voice said, “I thought it looked nice. It fit her well.”
    “Whatever, Sarah, your taste has always been in your mouth. Look at your first two husbands.”
    Sarah quieted, apparently squelched.
    “I wondered where she came from,” Chelsea went on, “so I asked Mrs. Larson about her. She said she was a girl Steve knew, who had followed him around like a puppy in high school and that he could never get rid of her.”
    I would like to punch this woman squarely in the throat. This is what I hate about places like this. Crowds of people who have convinced themselves their money makes them better than others, and who then prove that you can't purchase class.
    “But, listen to this. While they were still in high school, her father got drunk and killed two people at his work. Can you imagine? Mrs. Larson said that she thinks the only reason Steve is seeing her is because he feels sorry for her.”
    Elizabeth's blood ran cold. No one had mentioned her father in so many years. She had come to believe that she would never have to face the shame again. It had been so long that she had let her defenses atrophy.
    Her father, in addition to a number of other glaring character flaws, had been an inveterate drunkard. When Lizzie was fifteen, his boss had fired him for being drunk on a building site at ten o’clock in the morning. He had stormed off the site in a rage, forgetting his tools. Several hours later, drunker and angrier, he returned for them in his old pickup. They were all he had left, having pawned most of the rest. He was squealing his tires and flinging gravel all over the lot, then lost control of the vehicle and crashed headlong into the work trailer set up onsite. The job foreman sustained serious internal injuries, dying the next day. The secretary was killed instantly and gruesomely; she had just dropped by with some files two minutes before.
    The foreman had been popular with most of the workers. The community also knew him as a kind-hearted, encouraging T-ball coach in his spare time, someone who had helped their sons and daughters develop teamwork and love of the game. The secretary left behind two children: a boy of ten, and a girl of eight. The police had arrived to find Bill Coleman stuck in an attempt to squeeze out of