Free Passing Through Paradise by Susan Wiggs Page A

reflected. If you don’t get it right the first time, you can’t just start over from scratch. But that was just what he was trying to do.
    On the seat beside him, Zeke sat at full attention, ears pricked and tongue lolling. Every few seconds, the dog indulged the occasional need to bark.
    Before the divorce, Mike used to take his kids to mass at St. John’s, and after catechism class they’d drive up to the beach, or just hang around the house, shooting baskets or riding bikes. It had been easy to believe those days would never end, easy for both him and Angela to pretend they didn’t see the end coming.
    His head and heart were crammed with memories, but they were fragmented—Mary Margaret’s first step. Kevin’s first communion. Trips to Florida to see his folks. As for the day-to-day stuff, it was all a blur, like the landscape smearing past when you sped down the Interstate. He had buried himself in work, chasing down jobs, building up a clientele with single-minded, manic energy.
    And for what? So Angela could get a new car every year. So he could upgrade his boat. Join a country club. Send the kids to private school.
    He knew why. He wanted the best for his kids, but he had never fully understood what that meant. He’d always felt like a failure, getting booted off the team and having his scholarship yanked, quitting his degree program to start a business. Everyone admired him; he’d become one of the biggest contractors in Newport, and for years, that had defined him. Time passed at warp speed. Then one morning he woke up, looked at his wife and saw a stranger.
    A stranger who wanted a divorce.
    She’d “met” someone.
    Mike shook off the thought of his ex-wife. Today he had something else to think about—a long-overdue condolence call to Victor Winslow’s family.
    He drove even slower, pissed at himself for putting this off. He and Victor had been best friends, and no matter how many years had passed, he owed the family a visit to express his shock and grief and genuine sorrow. Now he had the added burden of a confession to make. He was putting in a bid to restore Sandra Winslow’s old house at Blue Moon Beach.
    In the church parking lot of Old Somerset Church, a woman hurried away from the building, fast, like she had to go throw up or something.
    Mike pulled off to the side of the road and watched her. Dark coat flapping in the wind. Shiny brown hair.
Sandra Winslow.
What the hell was she doing here?
    She got into her car and slammed the door. For a minute, she sat there with the heels of her hands resting on the steering wheel and her head down. The morning light haloed the fragile, unguarded lines of her face.
    Mike tried to dismiss the unsettling image of her. The house, not the woman, concerned him, he told himself, easing up on the brake pedal. Just then, Zeke decided to bark. Son of a bitch had a loud bark.
    Her head lifted, and she looked straight at Mike.
    Busted.
    Shit, he thought. Shit shit shit. Peeling out now would look rude. He couldn’t afford to be rude to a potential client, even Sandra Winslow.
    He raised one hand in a half wave. She rolled down the car window. At a loss, Mike slapped the truck in park and got out, telling Zeke to stay. He walked across the parking lot. “Car trouble?” he asked.
    “No.”
    He glanced at the church. “They let you out early for good behavior?”
    “Something like that.” She grimaced. “I changed my mind about church today.”
    She was a real charmer, he thought. Yet there was something in the way she held herself that made her look as though she could break at the slightest pressure. She was about to cry, he realized uncomfortably, focusing on the dangerous brightness in her eyes. He shouldn’t care— he didn’t care—but he heard himself say, “I was just going to go for a cup of coffee. You want to join me?”
    She flexed her hands on the steering wheel. “All right. Where?”
    “Follow me.” Mike kicked himself all the way back