Waiting for Ethan

by Diane Barnes

Genres: Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

When Gina Rossi was in junior high, her best friend's psychic grandmother got everything right—from predicting that Gina would break her arm and travel to Italy, all the way to leading police to a missing neighborhood child. The one time Gina didn't listen to her, she almost got herself killed. So when she says that Gina will marry a man named Ethan—but she will have to wait for him—Gina believes her, and waits...
 
Now thirty-six, Gina's Mr. Right is nowhere in sight—until the day she's stranded in a snowstorm, and rescued by the last type of Ethan she expected. It's very romantic, yet surprisingly not. This Ethan is sexy, and clearly her hero. Still, instead of her “Aha” moment, Gina's confused. And when Ethan is happy to discover she's single, does Gina dare tell him, It's because I've been waiting for you. But the bigger question is, does she dare question destiny—by taking it into her own hands? And is she brave enough to handle what happens once it's time to stop waiting—and start living?

“The novel's surprising twist gives the story a satisfying conclusion that makes Gina's struggle to find Mr. Right worth the wait. Fans of romantic beach-reads will find that this book's charismatic heroine makes it an engrossing page-turner.” --Kirkus Reviews

Release date: September 15, 2015

Publisher: Lyrical Press

Print pages: 222

Sample

“Neesha Patel’s grandmother ruined your life.” That’s what my mother says when I point out the obituary. She mutters to herself in Italian, glances at the picture in the newspaper, and then goes right back to making the list of things she wants me to check on when she and my father make their annual exodus to Florida later that day. I slide closer to her on the couch and begin reading the article out loud:


At the mention of the great-grandchildren, my mother looks up from her notepad and frowns. Finally, I think, she’s going to show some sympathy for the Patels. I even think I see tears in her eyes. “It sounds like both Sanjit and Neesha have children.” I nod, trying to picture my old friend with kids, but all I can see is a lanky fourteen-year-old girl with a long dark ponytail and a mouthful of wires. “Their grandmother is the reason I’ll never have grandchildren of my own.” Although her words sting, they don’t shock me. I am thirty-six and single. My mother long ago abandoned all hope of me ever getting married and having a family, and for this she blames the deceased, a woman I haven’t seen since I was fourteen.

“What’s going on in here? You’re supposed to be packing.” My father appears at the bottom of the stairs, dressed in a golf shirt and holding the driver I gave him for Christmas two weeks before. He can’t get to Florida fast enough to start playing again.

“Neesha Patel’s grandmother died.”

My father raises his eyebrows. “Recently?”

“Last week.”

“She must have been well over a hundred. She was ancient when she lived here.”

“The paper says she was ninety-two.”

My father rubs his chin. “That means she was only sixty-nine or seventy when they moved to Texas?”

“Right, Dad. Your age. Ancient.”

“I’m only sixty-seven, Gina, and I feel like I’m twenty.” He steps away from the stairs and takes a halfhearted swing with his golf club. “It’s being active that keeps me so young.” He winks. “May I?” He points at the paper, so I hand it to him.

My mother sighs. “Why did they even bother to publish her obituary in the Westham paper? They haven’t lived here for almost twenty-five years. People don’t remember her.”

I glare at my mother. “Mom, everyone remembers Ajee. She was a hero in this town.”

My mother rolls her eyes. “She was a nosy old woman, Gina. That’s all.”

I stand and walk to the living room window. The Patels’ old house is directly across the street. The Murphys live there now, but someday Neesha will be back. Her grandmother said so. She said it the same day she told me I would marry a man named Ethan.

As we load the last of the suitcases into my parents’ car, Mr. and Mrs. Murphy make their way across the street. My father mutters something incomprehensible under his breath. Mr. Murphy makes a beeline up the driveway and heads straight to me. “Gina.” He hugs me tightly as if he hasn’t seen me in ages. “Are you still on the market?” I nod. “What’s wrong with young men today? If I were just a few years younger ... But don’t you worry. Every pot has a lid.” He passes on similar pearls of wisdom every time I see him, which is about once a week when I visit my parents.

Mrs. Murphy follows about four steps behind her husband and zeroes in on my mother. She waves a picture in the air above her head. “I just have to show you my grandson before you leave, Angela.” She reaches the passenger door where my mother is standing and hands her a snapshot of a newborn baby. “Born yesterday. Isn’t he beautiful?”

My mother looks at me pointedly, and I feel my stomach begin a gymnastic act. How is it possible that Kelli Murphy, the seven-year-old sniveler I babysat for, is a wife and parent, while I’m not only single but haven’t had a meaningful date in the last three years?

My mother turns her attention to the photo and then smiles at Mrs. Murphy. My father looks at his watch. He wants to be in Virginia in bed by 10 p.m. because he has a 7:30 tee time tomorrow morning.

“He’s a big boy,” Mrs. Murphy says. “Nine pounds, six ounces.”

“He’s beautiful,” my mother says.

“He looks like me,” Mr. Murphy adds. “Spitting image.”

My mother laughs. My father opens the driver’s side door.

“They named him Ethan.” By the look on my mother’s face, you would think Mr. Murphy just said his grandson was named after Bin Laden.

“That’s a great name,” I say. My mother won’t make eye contact with me.

“It’s an old name that’s come back around,” Mrs. Murphy says.

My father leans into the car, puts the keys into the ignition, and starts the engine.

“We have to get going,” my mother says. “Congratulations on your grandson.”

The Murphys wobble back down the driveway, and my dad jumps into the driver’s seat. My mother hugs me. “Strange we should hear that name on the same day we learn of Ajee’s death,” she says. But I don’t think it’s strange at all. It’s a sign from Ajee. Don’t worry, she’s saying. Your Ethan will be here soon.

As the car starts to pull out of the driveway, my mother opens her window. “Gina, if some nice man asks you out this winter, promise me you’ll say yes, no matter what his name is.”

The news vans were parked up and down both sides of Towering Heights Lane. Television cameras pointed toward the top of the stairs leading to the Patels’ front door. A mob of reporters holding microphones stood on the lawn at the bottom of the steps calling Ajee’s name. From the bushes where Neesha and I crouched, I saw the Patels’ front door swing open and watched Ajee step outside and wave. She was wearing a purple and gold silk sari and a matching headband to keep her salt-and-pepper hair off her well-lined face. The clothes were a stark contrast to the Levi’s, Izod shirt, and tennis sneakers she had been wearing an hour earlier. I was pretty sure my mother was watching the commotion from our living room window, and I could imagine her snickering when she saw Ajee’s outfit. “That woman is such a fraud,” she would say to my father. Since the day Ajee arrived in Westham and predicted Neesha and Sanjit’s mother would not return from the hospital, my mother had no tolerance for Ajee and her so-called gift. It didn’t matter that Ajee had been right and Mrs. Patel died in the hospital. In fact, that only seemed to make my mother’s resentment worse.

The media had been stationed in our neighborhood all week. Before today, though, their attention was focused on the Colbys, my next-door neighbors. On Tuesday afternoon, six-year-old Matthew was playing in the sprinkler with his mother and three-year-old sister, Lisa. Mrs. Colby took Lisa inside to use the bathroom, and when she returned five minutes later, Matthew was gone.

The police investigated around the clock for five days and had no leads. On the sixth day, the Patels returned from their vacation. Within minutes of finding out what had happened to Matthew, Ajee was sitting on the Colbys’ front lawn cradling the sprinkler. My mother and I watched fascinated from our driveway. Dr. Patel came racing out of the Patels’ house. “What are you doing?” he shouted at his mother. “Get up now.”

The Colbys’ front door opened, and a police officer stepped outside. Ajee stood. “The boy was taken by a woman in a gray Oldsmobile. She lives in Rhode Island and is a friend of the father.”

Dr. Patel buried his head in his hands. “She thinks she has psychic abilities.”

Mr. Colby appeared at the door. “Tell him about your friend in Rhode Island,” Ajee hissed.

Dr. Patel grabbed Ajee’s arm. “I sincerely apologize,” he said as he led his mother back to their house.

Later that day, though, Matthew was found unharmed at the home of a woman who lived in Rhode Island and drove a gray Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. Until three months before the abduction, she worked with Matthew’s father.

The police credited Ajee with the tip that brought Matthew home safely, and the media that had been staking out the Colbys’ house turned their attention to the Patels. Ajee basked in it. She stood at the top of the Patels’ landing with her hands clasped together in front of her stomach, explaining the origins of her gift. “I began experiencing visionary images at a very young age. I can’t explain why or how it happens; it just does.” She paused. “When I touched the sprinkler, I saw the woman and the car. Who knows why these things are so?” She shrugged.

A redheaded reporter whom I had seen on Channel 5 for years raised her hand. I struggled to recall her name. Cindy maybe? “So you need to touch something for your power to work?”

Ajee nodded. “Usually.” She descended to the bottom of the stairs and extended her arm to the reporter. “Give me your pen.”

Shelly Lange? No, that wasn’t her name.

The reporter handed her the pen. Ajee closed her eyes and rolled the writing instrument between her hands. The only sound was the clanking the pen made as it crossed over her rings.

Terri Vance. That was the reporter’s name.

After what seemed like several minutes, Ajee opened her eyes and gave the pen back to Terri. “You will quite enjoy the West Coast.”

Terri’s expression was blank. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Ajee smiled, turned her back to the reporter, and climbed to the top of the landing. She spun to face the crowd again and looked directly at Terri. “Soon. You will understand soon.” She scanned the crowd with her eyes. “If the rest of you want readings, you will need to make appointments.”

A few weeks later, the redheaded reporter, Terri Vance, announced on the air that she had been offered and accepted a job with the ABC affiliate in San Francisco. “You may remember,” she said. “The psychic of Westham predicted I would enjoy the West Coast. At the time I had no idea what she was talking about.” The name stuck. Ajee became known as the psychic of Westham, and her business took off.

Before all the media attention, she gave one or two readings a week. Now she was conducting four or five a day. One afternoon Neesha and I decided we wanted to see what went on during these readings. Before Ajee’s two o’clock appointment, we snuck downstairs to the Patels’ basement and hid in the large closet directly across from Ajee’s “reading parlor.” That’s what Ajee called the area. In reality, it was a section of the cellar partitioned off with a curtain.

When we first entered the closet, Neesha froze, noticing her mother’s clothes still hanging from the racks. She reached for a green wool sweater that I remembered Mrs. Patel wearing often and put it on even though beads of sweat were running down her forehead. We were thirteen. Neesha’s mother had been dead for six years, and I still hadn’t figured out what I could do or say to make her feel better at times like this, so I said nothing.

As we took our positions on the floor, we heard footsteps on the stairs and a voice we didn’t recognize followed by Ajee’s. Soon Ajee was sitting at her reading table with a client, a blond woman named Mary who was the teller at my parents’ bank. Mary sat erect in the chair with her arms folded across her chest. Ajee, dressed in the sari she wore at her press conference and the only sari she owned as far as I knew, leaned forward with both elbows on the table and her chin resting on the backs of her clasped hands watching Mary.

The smell of cedar in the closet was overpowering, so I pushed the door open a crack more to bring in fresh air. The sound of the squeaking hinges reverberated throughout the basement. Ajee’s head turned toward the closet. Neesha and I both leaned away from the door. After several seconds, Ajee refocused her attention on Mary.

“Let me have your watch,” Ajee instructed.

I watched Mary unclasp the watch and hand it to Ajee. She cradled it in her hands and held it in front of her heart. She closed her eyes and didn’t move for several seconds. Behind me, I heard Neesha take a deep breath. When I turned to look, I saw she was holding her breath. She looked so ridiculous with her puffed-out cheeks trying not to laugh, that I laughed, causing Neesha to snort.

“What was that?” Mary asked.

I pulled the closet door shut. Neesha and I slid back into the row of clothing. A moment later we heard the flip-flop sound of Ajee’s sandals slapping the cement floor approaching the closet. The door flew open, and Ajee jerked her head inside. She looked at us with a half smile and then suddenly yelled, “Scram!” Giggling, Neesha and I ran upstairs. Later, when Ajee emerged from the basement, she fanned three ten-dollar bills in front of us. “Laugh all you want, girls, but that woman paid thirty dollars for my information.”

The next day, when she caught us spying again, she wasn’t as amused. “What I do is a business. It is serious. There is no room for little girls spying. How can I get you to stop?”

Neesha and I looked at each other and grinned. “Tell us our fortunes,” we said in unison. Until that day, Ajee had always refused, saying we had to wait until we were older.

Neesha went first. Ajee instructed her to hand over her bracelet. It was made of thick white rope, and I had one that matched on my wrist. We had bought them the previous summer on Cape Cod. With some effort, Neesha removed the bracelet and handed it to Ajee.

Ajee immediately dropped it. “Sometimes it is better not to know the future.”

“You promised,” Neesha said.

Ajee cleared her throat. “Very well.” She picked up the bracelet and closed her eyes. “You will like this,” she said, opening her eyes. “The handsome boy will kiss you before summer ends.”

The handsome boy was Josh Levine, the neighborhood cutie. I had to admit, I hoped Ajee was wrong. I didn’t want Josh kissing Neesha. I wanted him to kiss me.

Ajee closed her eyes again. She opened them a few moments later, and she looked as serious as I had ever seen her. “You will move away before the start of high school, and you will not return again until you are an adult with children of your own. Yes, you and your family will own this very house.”

I felt my heart racing. High school was just a year away. Neesha couldn’t move. She was my best friend.

Neesha looked at me and shook her head. “She’s just trying to scare us.”

Ajee reached for Neesha’s hand and held it for several seconds. “I am sorry, dear one, but it is what I see.”

Neesha popped up from the seat. “Your turn, Gina.” She looked pointedly at her grandmother. “Be truthful.”

I sat, and Ajee instructed me to give her my bracelet. I pulled it from my wrist and handed it to her. She spun it around her index finger and closed her eyes. “You will visit Italy before high school starts.” She was quiet for a second and then frowned. “You will break your arm before school starts again.”

“Ajee!” Neesha screamed.

“I am only telling you what I see.” Ajee opened her eyes. I must have looked scared because she reached for my hand. “Bella,” because of my dark hair and eyes and olive complexion, she thought I looked more Italian than American and often addressed me by the Italian word for “beautiful.” “Do not worry. I will tell you the name of your husband. You will like that, yes?”

I nodded enthusiastically, sure she was going to say Josh Levine. Who cared if Neesha got to kiss him? I was going to marry him. Mrs. Josh Levine. Gina Levine.

Ajee looked right into my eyes. “Ethan.”

Ethan? Confused, I pulled my hand from hers. “I don’t know anyone named Ethan.”

“You will not meet him for many years. You will get tired of waiting. You will doubt that he will come, but he will. You must wait. You must wait for Ethan.”

Within days of Ajee making those predictions, Josh Levine kissed Neesha, and I fell off my bicycle and broke my arm. Still, I might have ignored her instructions to wait for Ethan if not for what happened Labor Day weekend. To celebrate getting my cast off, I went to the beach with the Patels. Neesha, her brother Sanjit, and I were playing in the waves most of the day while Ajee and Dr. Patel were rooted in beach chairs reading. In the late afternoon, Ajee walked down to the water and called for us. “I want you to get out of the water now,” she said. “I have a very bad feeling.”

Sanjit splashed her and swam away. Neesha followed. I stood on the shoreline with her. “Come, Bella. It is not safe.” At the same time, Neesha and Sanjit called for me to come back in the water.

“Sorry, Ajee,” I said. I turned and started walking to them. In front of me a father lifted his small daughter onto his shoulders and she dove off. I took several steps to the right to avoid them. The water I was walking through became eerily still. I took another step, but this time when I tried to put my foot down, I could no longer touch the bottom. I turned back to look at the shore and realized I was out much deeper than I thought, much deeper than I was comfortable with. I had somehow been carried out beyond Neesha and Sanjit. I tried to swim toward the shore, but felt myself getting pulled farther and farther away. I moved my arms as fast as possible. I kicked my legs as hard as I could. It made no difference. Instead of going forward I was being pulled backward. The people on the beach got smaller. My arms and legs became heavy. I no longer had the strength to move them. I gasped to catch my breath and could taste salt water filling my mouth. My heart, which had been beating frantically, seemed to stop as I felt myself sinking beneath the surface. Everything got black and quiet.

I came to lying on the beach while the lifeguard pumped my chest. A crowd with worried expressions peered over her shoulder down at me. Someone nearby was crying. I coughed, and water spurted out of my mouth. The lifeguard stopped pounding. She sank from her knees to her butt and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. The crowd clapped.

“You got caught in a riptide. I pulled you out,” the lifeguard said.

“Thank you,” I murmured.

“Swim out of a rip current. Parallel to the shore. Never against it.” She seemed to be addressing the entire crowd.

“You’re okay now,” Dr. Patel said. I hadn’t noticed he was kneeling to my right. “But you scared us.” Behind him, Sanjit, with tears streaming down his face, held Neesha’s hand. Her usually dark face was white. Next to them, Ajee repeatedly tapped her bare foot on the sand. “I warned you. Why didn’t you listen?” she mumbled. She came and sat next to me, taking my hand into hers. “You girls have to listen. I know things.”

“We will. From now on,” I promised, knowing I would never speak truer words.

Neesha and I spent most of eighth grade trying to figure out how Ajee knew the things she did. We’d sit at the kitchen table pretending to do our homework while we studied her cooking at the stove. She hummed a lot. We’d follow her into the living room and watch her while she watched television. She’d scream at the characters on General Hospital, telling them they were stupid. We volunteered to go to the grocery store with her. She ate a bag of Doritos as she shopped and always discarded the empty bag before getting to the cash register. Her breath would smell like nacho cheese, and her fingers would be covered with orange powder that would inevitably get smeared on the money she gave to the cashier, but she never got caught. As closely as we scrutinized her, we found nothing that explained how she could see the things she did. When we asked her, she would only shrug.

While we believed in her powers wholeheartedly, as each day of eighth grade passed with no word that the Patels would be moving or I would visit Italy, we let ourselves believe that Ajee could sometimes get it wrong. On the last day of the school year we believed we were. . .