Chapter 1
Helen Baker peeked out from behind her heavy living-room drapes to the darkened street, surveying the space between the streetlights. She hadn’t seen any ghosts or witches or Star Wars characters in at least thirty minutes. The mantel clock—a wedding present for her and Sam thirty years earlier—struck eight, and she let the drapes drop back into place.
Halloween was over, and so was the most hellish year of her life.
She shut off the front porch light and carried the bowl with the remaining miniature chocolate bars to the kitchen. There were enough of these sweet morsels to give her a sugar high. She should put them away, but she had earned the right to celebrate first.
A bottle of her favorite Merlot, which she had found the last time she went wine tasting in the Okanagan, waited patiently on the kitchen table along with a large goblet, her day planner, a red marker, and the sealed manila envelope she had received earlier that day. She peeled the wrapping off a chocolate, popped it into her mouth, and poured the wine. She sat down at the table and, ignoring the envelope, opened the book.
Taking up a red pen, she marked off the day with an X. Then she lifted the glass and toasted herself.
“Well, Helen, congratulations. You did it.” She had kept her promise to her mother and her therapist and had managed to get through the gauntlet of firsts: first Christmas, first birthday, first Valentine’s Day, first wedding anniversary, first major family occasion—in this case, their daughter’s wedding—and now her first Halloween without her husband by her side. Promise kept, she could move on to her new life, alone, on her own terms.
The crackle and pop of fireworks made her jump, and then her blood pressure rose. They weren’t holding a Halloween party. Not after last year’s shenanigans, surely?
She looked out the window and her eyes confirmed what her ears were hearing. There was Jillian, her former best friend, all bright-eyed smiles, showing off her new haircut and slimmer figure and entertaining all their neighbors without her. Seriously? Did she feel no remorse at all?
Helen tromped to the front door, pulled on her coat and shoes, crammed a toque on her head, and grabbed her gloves. She would go over there and give Jill a piece of her mind. How dare she hold the party they had always held together? How dare she entertain the neighbors without her? She would go over there, and...
And then what?
Repeat last year’s disgrace?
Tears pricked at her eyes, and she stopped with her hand on the doorknob. She had celebrated too soon this evening. She had one more first to get through before she could really move on. She walked to the kitchen window and watched the bright yellow, red, and green fireworks sail upward, pause, burst into hundreds of bits of light, and then fall back to earth. This was the first time in twenty-three years she wasn’t part of this neighborhood tradition.
It had started when Kim and Brandon—her daughter and Jillian’s son—were five. Helen and Jillian, who lived next door to each other, took turns holding the backyard Halloween fireworks party. Even after Kim had grown and moved away from Vancouver Island to attend school in Toronto, Helen and Jillian continued to hold the party. To offer this fun for other children helped ease the emptiness that came from their children moving on. Even after Jill’s husband died two years earlier, they continued to hold it. Just the same as always… until last year.
Last year, another neighbor, Khalid, had insisted on putting on the fireworks. He had an extra-special display, he’d said, and had gotten the fireworks on sale. Helen and her husband, Sam, had been happy to pass the torch.
The finale had been spectacular, lighting up the sky much brighter than in previous years. It also exposed the shadows—including the one Jillian and Sam were canoodling in, unaware they had been caught. Helen tromped over to the back of the shed, where they were nearly fornicating in public, and screamed at them. Thankfully, the shadows had returned by then, and the noise from the crowd was enough to drown out most of her anguish. Anyone who saw them worked hard to pretend they hadn’t, and most guests made their excuses to leave, slinking into the night quickly.
“It meant nothing,” Sam insisted later.
“It just happened,” said Jill.
But things like that don’t just happen, and once the fireworks had exposed their affair, she saw the other things that had been hiding in dark places: the mutual friends who couldn’t look her in the eye, the money disappearing from their joint account, the fact that Jill would coincidentally visit her mother every time Sam had to go out of town for a meeting. They were the indisputable signs of a decaying marriage and, worse, a decaying friendship.
She couldn’t and wouldn’t replay that scene today. She stripped off her coat and boots and traipsed back to the kitchen. She topped off her wineglass and took that and her planner into the dining room, as far away from the fireworks and joyful noise as she could get. She was truly alone now.
In the past year, she had seen the friends drift away. They offered excuses for not seeing her, as though she had leprosy and not a case of singleness. To be single in a world of couples was to be a thorn amongst roses. Dangerous. Suspect. Alone.
Despite her loneliness, she had done well managing the year of firsts. She rarely cried and just kept going: teaching, planning Kim’s wedding, facing each morning with courage, and ending each day tired but with a sense of accomplishment. Why, after getting through all those tough days in one piece, was she now standing in her dining room, sobbing?
She glanced at the unopened envelope again: the divorce papers her lawyer had sent over by courier. All she had to do was sign them.
The phone rang, then, and she stood up, swiping at the tears with her sleeve as she walked back to the kitchen to retrieve her cell phone.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Helen. It’s Sylvia. I wanted to call and see how you were doing. I remember…” She paused a moment. “Well, it’s been a year, and I just wanted to see how you’re getting on.”
“Oh, Sylvia, thank you for calling.” Helen leaned over to grab a tissue from a nearby box and mop up her tears. “It is so good to hear from you.”
“I also wanted to invite you to visit on the next long weekend in November. I know you wanted a reason to get back here one day.”
Sylvia was right. Helen had been meaning to spend some time in Sunshine Bay. It had been a vacation spot for her family when she was a child. Later, she and Kim had spent summer vacations at a cabin on the beach there. Sam hadn’t ever been able to join them, preferring vacations that involved flying. It made Sunshine Bay a place for just the two of them, and right now she wanted to visit somewhere that wasn’t soaked in memories of Sam.
“That would be nice. I would give me a reason to get away.”
“That’s great,” said Sylvia. “And if you like it here, well…”
“Is there something else?”
“Actually,” Sylvia said, “there is something else. I know Kim is staying in Ontario for the holidays this year, and you said you didn’t have any firm plans…”
No, Helen didn’t want to spend Christmas with Sylvia and Jack. It would just remind her she was a third wheel.
“Oh, Sylvia, that’s sweet. But I was planning to go somewhere like Tofino and spend some time watching storms or something. You know. Alone and doing something that doesn’t involve Christmas in Duncan.”
“What? No. I think you misunderstand me. And I feel strange for asking, but…”
“But what? Do you need something?”
“Well… I know this is a lot to ask—”
“More so than when I asked you to help with Kim’s wedding? I’ll do anything I can to help. What do you need?” Sylvia had stood by her, a rock in the stream of emotions leading up to Kim’s big day. If there was any way she could help, she would. Sylvia had been someone she could count on when those she had counted on before had floated out of reach.
“I hoped that you would consider spending your time in Sunshine Bay, house-sitting for Jack and me. Well, cat-sitting. We plan to visit Jack’s daughter Cassie in Kelowna. Angel would need to stay here, and it’ll be the first time I’ve left her since she began to trust us.”
“Hence the visit next weekend?”
“You caught me. I thought it would solve two problems at once: it would give you a place to go, and it would also help me. You’re good with animals, and I know what it’s like to spend Christmas alone. After my first husband died, I didn’t want to see anyone.”
“Yes. And I would love to watch over Angel for Christmas. It will give me time to figure out what to do next.” She couldn’t stay here, and Sunshine Bay had always intrigued her. It was larger than Duncan but still had that small-town feeling. And it was far away from neighbors and friends who no longer saw her as part of their life. Maybe Sunshine Bay could be more than a place to spend Christmas. Maybe it could be a place where she could create a new life. Where she could finally belong.
“Wonderful,” said Sylvia. “When does school end this semester? I’m afraid I am out of the loop these days.”
“For me, it’s over two weeks before Christmas. I’ve been filling in for a teacher who had surgery. She will return to the classroom part-time within the next three weeks and then full-time in mid-December.”
“Well, when you get here this weekend, we can talk about a good day for you to come back.”
“That sounds grand. I’ll see you in two weeks. I’ll head up directly after school, so I should be there just in time for dinner.”
It was too bad Sylvia had a cat and not a dog, Helen thought, but she supposed it was better than nothing. Maybe she could coax this cat to spend some time with her. Sam’s cat now lived next door. She never did get along with that animal, and now she knew why the cat had always welcomed Jillian whenever she came to visit.
Even her cat had been a traitor, but she couldn’t blame Angel for that. Besides, this cat-sitting adventure would only be for two weeks.
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