Free A Wedding on Primrose Street (Life In Icicle Falls Book 7) by Sheila Roberts

done.”
    Daphne heaved a huge sigh. “You’re probably right. I don’t seem to do very well at picking men.”
    “It’s hard to pick a good one when so many of the ones hanging on the branch are rotten,” Dot said.
    Daphne pushed back a lock of blond hair. “I suppose there are still some good men out there. I’ve just never been able to find one.”
    My poor daughter
, Roberta thought.
Where did I go wrong?
Daphne should have been happily married. And successful. But here she was, rejected, dejected and living with her mother.
    “Muriel sure knows how to find the good ones,” Dot said. “In fact, you should talk to her daughter. Cecily used to be a matchmaker. Maybe she’ll have some ideas for you.”
    “Like how to murder my husband?”
    Roberta frowned at her, but Dot chuckled. “Things’ll work out. They always do.”
    “Daphne!” Roberta scolded as Dot moved on to greet her other customers.
    “Sorry,” Daphne said in an unrepentant voice, “but I really could murder him. Stake him out in the sun covered with honey and let the ants have at him.”
    “There’s an appetizing image,” Roberta said in disgust. “Although I must admit, even that’s better than he deserves.” She’d never say it publicly, but she wouldn’t mind getting a chance to put her hands around Mitchell’s throat.
    “Every time I think of him and that woman I want to...” Daphne crumpled her paper napkin.
    Roberta reached across the table and patted her arm. “He didn’t deserve you, dear. You’re well rid of him.”
    Daphne’s eyes filled with tears. “How could he do this to me?”
    Quite easily, it seemed. But since that was obviously a rhetorical question, Roberta kept her answer to herself. She gave her daughter’s arm another encouraging pat. “We’re not going to waste any more energy talking about him. Instead, we’ll focus on you. We need to come up with a plan for what you’re going to do next. You can’t just mope around the house all day.”
    “I don’t want to mope. Let me help with the next wedding.”
    “There’s really nothing left to do,” Roberta said. “Everything’s under control.”
    Daphne looked at her, reproach in her eyes. “You don’t want me to help.”
    Yes, that was part of it.
    “You should let me,” Daphne urged. “You may as well plug me in now. You’ve got bunion surgery coming up in May. You’ll need the extra help.”
    She probably would. She’d planned to delegate more work to Lila. “Darling, you’re going to be busy with your divorce.”
    “Not that busy.”
    “Well, then, you should be busy job-hunting. You don’t want to work on weddings, not in your present state of mind.”
    “I want to help you. I want to be useful.”
    “You’re being useful.” Daphne had cleaned the whole house the day before, even transferred her dirty breakfast dishes from the sink to the dishwasher without being nagged.
    “I could do more if you’d let me. If you’d believe in me,” Daphne added softly.
    Was that what Daphne thought? That she didn’t believe in her? If she hadn’t believed in her daughter, why would she have wasted her breath all these years suggesting things Daphne could do to improve her life?
    “I’m fifty-three and you still don’t see me as anything but a failure,” Daphne said.
    “That’s not true.” Except it was. Oh, dear.
    The waitress arrived to take their orders, ending the conversation for the moment. Roberta found she didn’t have much of an appetite. “Coffee, please,” she said.
    Why did everything have to be so difficult between mothers and daughters? Or was it just her and Daphne?
    Maybe it
was
just her. She was always encouraging Daphne to try more, do more, be more, but whenever Daphne offered to help with the business, Roberta put her off.
    Daphne wanted Roberta to be proud of her, possibly even more than Roberta did. She needed to give her daughter a chance to earn that pride, something Roberta’s mother had never done