With a Twist Read online

  “Do you think you’ll make it for two more weeks without killing any of the children?” Savannah asked Vanessa.

  “We ask her that every year,” Julia said from her spot behind the practice bar. “So far, murder has been avoided.”

  “Or we just don’t know about it,” Amelia pointed out. “Her kids are small. Easy to hide the bodies.”

  Savannah looked at her in mock-horror.

  “It’s been close a few times,” said Vanessa, the second-grade teacher. “But I’m happy to report that no blood was shed today.”

  “How many days left?” Amelia asked.

  “Eight with students, ten total,” Vanessa answered without even taking a breath to think.

  “But who’s counting?” Savannah said with a laugh. “Where’s Grace tonight?” Grace was Vanessa’s girlfriend of about six months.

  “She’s got a couple weddings coming up this weekend, so she’s been working late to get all her ducks in a row. Oliver’s with his dad.” Grace owned a local flower shop, and Oliver was Grace’s son, also Vanessa’s student, so they’d been very private about their relationship.

  “Oh!” Amelia said as she made the connection. “That means only eight more days of keeping things under wraps, right?”

  Vanessa nodded and her smile was adorable. She was crazy about Grace, and it was so nice to see. Amelia was thrilled for them, despite that tiny pang of sadness. It sucked when everybody around you was either paired up or pairing up, and you were the odd girl out. She did her best to buck up, though, because these were her favorite people in the universe, and all she wanted was to be happy for them.

  “To no longer lurking in the shadows like creepers,” Amelia said and held up her beer.

  “Damn, I’ll drink to that,” Vanessa said, and the four of them touched glasses together. Amelia had a beer, Savannah had a sauvignon blanc, Julia had a Diet Coke, and Vanessa’s was a club soda. No drinking on school nights for her. Mostly. And Julia didn’t drink when the bar was open. “Next time, I’ll have something stronger in my glass.”

  They sipped, and there was a lull before Savannah asked, “Hey, Meels, how’s the dog business? Do Dogz with a Z still rule?”

  “Always. And business is not bad at all,” Amelia told her, still petting Delilah. “I picked up another new client the other day, and my dad has somebody who may need me to both dog-sit and house-sit. I’m waiting for more details on that.”

  “You’re in a good position to do that,” Vanessa said.

  “You mean because I am a woman in my forties and I live in my father’s house and have no home of my own? Yes, in fact, I am living like I’m fresh out of college. I mean, it’s only been what? Twenty-five years since I graduated? Twenty-six?” Immediately she sighed and shook her head. “I’m sorry. Ignore me. I’m in a mood.”

  Savannah reached over and squeezed her shoulder. “You’re just frustrated,” she said. “That’s allowed.”

  The other two nodded, gave her smiles, and she sort of grimaced back.

  “And it’s been twenty-seven years since you graduated college,” Julia said, then ducked behind the bar as Amelia frisbeed a cardboard coaster at her.

  “Well, with your dad in Florida, it’s not like you’re actually living with him,” Vanessa offered up, clearly trying to make her feel better because that’s what Vanessa did. “You do live by yourself still.”

  “I do.” Which didn’t make it any better. At all. But she appreciated the effort.

  “But dog-sitting and house-sitting?” Julia asked. “That’s a big order.”

  “The guy’s a friend of my dad’s, and I guess he’s got a long business trip to Japan on tap and is having some work done in his house while he’s away. He thought having somebody stay to not only watch the dogs, but keep an eye on the work might be a smart way to go. And my dad offered me up on a plate.” Amelia grimaced. “Do I sound less than thrilled?”

  Savannah held up her thumb and forefinger a tiny bit apart. “A skosh.”

  Amelia dropped back against the couch with a sigh of frustration. “I just need to figure my life out. What do I want to do? Where do I want to live? Do I want a house? An apartment? A town house? A houseboat?”

  “If it came down to it,” Julia told her as she poured what looked like vodka into a stainless steel shaker, “you could camp out here in The Bar Back. I can tell you from experience that the couch is pretty comfy. I’d rent it to you for cheap.” She looked up and winked.

  “You’re swell,” Amelia said as the others chuckled.

  “Anything for family,” Julia said with a grin.

  The topic shifted to other things. Savannah squeezed Amelia’s shoulder and gave her a warm smile. She got it. She understood more than the cousins did how Amelia was feeling. It wasn’t that she couldn’t afford to find her own place. She could. It was that her brain was just…lost.

  That was the word. She felt lost.

  She just needed to find where she belonged in this new reality of hers. She never planned on being divorced and single at forty-nine. It was nowhere in her grand life plan. Not even close. What she needed to do was scrap that plan and make a new one. Right? That was all.

  Which was so much easier said than done.

  Chapter Two

  “Seriously, is there anything more beautiful?”

  There was a woman nearby, also looking at the paint samples in the Home Depot, and she glanced up, met Kirby’s grin. “Um…no?”

  Kirby laughed. “No is right. Look at all these colors!”

  The woman gave her head a small shake, grinned just a bit, and headed to the counter with her paint chip.

  “Good choice,” Kirby called after her. “Champagne Toast is a lovely color.” She turned back to the wall of color samples, her favorite place in the world. So much variety. So much possibility.

  Color was life to Kirby. Color made life better. Cooler or warmer or more inviting or less intimidating. The color of the walls was integral to the mood, the attitude a room portrayed, and she loved everything about it. She could pick out a couple new chips that had been added since her visit last week. Salmon Run was a coral-pink blend. A new soft gray called Morning Mist. A happy yellow named Baby Chick.

  “Are you gonna be froufrou hippy color lover all morning, or can we get going?” John Krogorski tilted his bandanna’d head at her, scratched at his graying beard, and waited her out.

  She gave him her most dramatic sigh. “First of all, Krog, you’re the hippy here, sir. Second, fine. Pull me away from my babies.”

  “I wouldn’t if it wasn’t closing in on nine. We gotta be there by nine thirty.”

  “Fine,” Kirby said again before snagging five new color chips off the display. “Come with me, little beauties,” she whispered to them.

  Twenty minutes later, they pulled the Dupree Paint Design van into the driveway on Marley Lane that ran alongside a cute little Cape. The woman inside wanted her living room painted. Kirby knew she and Krog could knock that off in less than two hours. That afternoon, they had another interior to paint, but that one was a two-story great room, and they were going to need some scaffolding and an extra set of hands.

  “Coop meeting us later?” Krog asked, as if reading her mind, which she was beginning to think he could. He’d worked with her father when he’d started the business thirty years ago. Krog had his issues, but he knew paint, and he knew how to paint.

  “Yep. He’ll meet us there.” Jason Cooper—Coop—was one of the part-timers she hired when they had a big job. “Let’s get this done. I have to squeeze in a quote before then.” Kirby scratched her fingers through her short hair before putting her Dupree Paint Design baseball hat on backward. She’d be rolling today, and she never failed to end up with paint speckles in her hair on rolling days. This was a cake job, though. One color, two coats, easy peasy lemon squeezy. She and Krog gathered their supplies and headed up the walk, where Mrs. Janikowski, a woman in her early seventies, stood in the front door, smiling.

  “Good morning, Mrs. J. You ready for a new living room?”

  Kirby loved painting. She’d loved it since the first time she went on a job with her dad, and he let her roll part of a wall. There was something about it, something about smoothing a layer of fresh paint, whether it was a bright, bold color or simply white, that spoke of a clean slate. A fresh start. She loved what something as simple as a new color could do for a space. And when she found a customer who let her be creative? Look out.

  Business was good, and Kirby was thankful for that but also knew it had to do with her work. It was good. Damn good. Her father had taught her from the beginning, when she was fifteen and he’d actually hired her, taken her on for the summer—never do shoddy work when your name is attached, and always keep the customer happy, no matter what. Invaluable lessons, both of them, given how important reviews were. She checked Yelp and Angi regularly and monitored the comments on the business’s social accounts. She had an alert on her phone in case her company was mentioned anywhere online, and she had a list of neighborhood groups she checked at least once a week. Word of mouth kept her schedule full.

  Krog laid out the tarp while Kirby moved furniture away from the walls. Mrs. Janikowski brought them each a cup of coffee and offered them blueberry muffins she’d made herself, which were nummy.

  They got to work.

  Wednesday was softball night, and Kirby looked forward to it each week, looked forward to stretching her legs and working her muscles and seeing her friends.

  “How the hell can you say you play softball for the exercise when you do what you do all day long?” Lark Dawson said to he
r that evening while they warmed up, tossing the ball back and forth. “Your job is exercise.” She demonstrated her point by miming rolling invisible paint on an invisible wall. “See how my arms are working? My shoulders?” Then she used her imaginary paintbrush and squatted down to paint an invisible bit of trim by her feet. “See me squatting, thereby using my quads and glutes?”

  Kirby laughed. “You make a valid point, but I guess I just don’t make the connection in my head. One is work, the other is fun.”

  “Both are exercise,” Lark said.

  These were her people. And this was her season. Not that Kirby didn’t love all the seasons. She totally did. But summer meant softball, and softball was her favorite. She’d loved it since she was old enough to pick up a bat, and her dad had gotten her her very first mitt when she was just five. She also loved volleyball. And golf. And hiking. And swimming. Basically, anything that moved her body moved her.

  She hit a double and three singles, stopped a wickedly hit line drive, and turned three double plays before the game was over and she and the team headed off to the bar that sponsored them, Martini’s. By eight o’clock, she had a beer in her hand and was laughing along with her team as they told stories of games past.

  “And Kirbs over here,” Lark was saying, talking about a game they’d played years ago, “just crushed the ball. Right over the fence. Game over.”

  “I bet that was so cool,” said Emma, one of their new teammates this year. She was nice, but a little intense, Kirby thought. She was small and cute, but her eyes always seemed a little bit too wide.

  Lark leaned close to Kirby as she signaled for a refill and said under her breath, “Crushing hard on you, that one.”

  Kirby snorted as the conversation continued and Emma’s attention was pulled away.

  “Nothing there?” Lark asked quietly. “She’s nice, and she clearly likes you.”

  “What is she, twelve?” Kirby asked on a scoff.

  Lark shook her head. “I forget you prefer to date the elderly.”

  Kirby gave her a playful punch. “Hey. Shut up. I do not.” Before they could get into it, though, they were interrupted by Julia Martini, owner of the bar and one of the bartenders that night.

  “You guys win?” she asked, her thick, dark hair pulled back in a low ponytail.

  “We did,” Kirby said. “Eight to three. We’re undefeated so far.”

  “Nice. Bring me home a trophy, will you? I’ll put up a shelf.”

  Kirby loved this place, and it made her happy to patronize a client. She’d painted the interior when Julia was remodeling. She’d talked her into the cool, but inviting gray—which was called Serene Cliffs, but Kirby would’ve named Don’t Slate Me Because I’m Beautiful—that was on the main wall, and every time she walked in, she congratulated herself on choosing an impeccable color. It worked perfectly in the setting, accenting two walls of windows and one of exposed brick.

  “Admiring your handiwork?” Julia asked her, pulling her back to the present.

  Kirby felt her cheeks heat up as she laughed. “Yes, sorry. It’s just a really perfect color.” As she drained her beer, she recognized the attractive woman sitting at the far corner of the bar and grinned to herself. “Unless we ask her.” She gestured with her chin.

  “Who’s that?” Lark asked, even as Julia chuckled.

  “That’s my cousin Amelia. She and Kirby disagreed on the color of that wall when I first opened.” Turning her dark eyes to Kirby, she added, “I’m surprised you even remember her. That was last year, wasn’t it? When we first opened?”

  Kirby shrugged. “Just stuck in my head, I guess.” What she did not say was, Of course I remember her because she’s freaking hot. I thought so then, and I think so now. No, she’d keep that to herself.

  But Lark didn’t miss it, and as Julia left to help another customer, she said, “Now she is just your type.”

  “Totally.”

  “Does she drive on our side of the street?”

  Kirby shrugged. “No idea.”

  “Want me to find out?”

  Kirby turned wide eyes to her friend, then realized she was kidding, even as she stage-whispered, “Don’t you dare.”

  “Isn’t it time you started thinking about dating again?” Lark’s brown eyes were the exact color of a Hershey bar, and they softened as Kirby met them. “It’s been a while. Time to get back on the horse, you know?”

  A sigh. A gulp of Bud Light. A nod. “I know. You’re right. I’ve been…thinking about it.” And that was true. Her last relationship had ended almost two years ago. It was for the best, and she’d thrown herself even more into her work than her ex had accused her of doing. And there hadn’t been anybody new since. Maybe Lark was right.

  “You’re a catch, Kirbs. Reactivate your profile.”

  * * *

  It was almost midnight, and Kirby really should’ve been off to Snoozeville by then. Tomorrow was a busy day—she had a really cool design project as well as a meeting with a very high-end client—and she really needed to make an attempt to sleep. Instead of turning off the lights, though, she was lying in bed, phone in hand, squinting at her dating profile and trying to decide if she should reactivate it like Lark said.

  So many of her friends had met each other online. It was how things were done, right? Who had time to meet people when you had work and family and life taking up your time?

  “I don’t have time for a dog,” she said out loud to her dark bedroom. “When would I have time to date?”

  It was a super weak excuse, and she knew it.

  With a groan, she clicked the phone off and set it on her nightstand. The fan in the corner of the room was on low, and the soft breeze felt nice, cooling the room and her skin, and she snuggled down into the covers. In another month, she’d be sweltering—the AC unit would be shoved in her window and humming like crazy. She really needed to find a place with central air, but for now, her parents’ house was just fine.

  Sleep hadn’t been Kirby’s friend for a long time now. Years, in fact. She could be exhausted beyond belief, going through life like a zombie, but the second she hit the mattress, her brain began to whir, her thoughts decided it was time for a show, and sleep ran away and hid someplace where she often couldn’t find it at all.

  As she lay there, staring up at the ceiling, she tried her deep-breathing exercises. The ones the therapist had given her so long ago.

  Breathe in for a count of four…

  Hold it for a count of seven…

  Exhale for a count of eight…

  Slowly, so very slowly, she felt her heart rate begin to calm. Her limbs relaxed. She imagined her body melting into the mattress…

  A car horn honked outside, and her eyes flew open.

  “Goddamn it,” she grumbled.

  Yeah, it was going to be one of those nights.

  Chapter Three

  “This is the kind of thing you do now, right?” Amelia’s father asked over the phone. His hesitation was clear in his deep voice. “This is your job, yeah?”

  “Yes, Dad, this is what I do now.” It really was cute that he was checking, like he didn’t want to screw it up. “I walk dogs, I check in on dogs, I dog-sit. That sometimes includes house-sitting, if the dog is more comfortable staying home than being boarded.”

  “Okay, good,” her dad said, and she could hear his grin. “Well, Vic’s a good guy. I’ve known him for years. He’s a straight shooter.” That was the highest compliment a person could get from Tony Martini. If he called you a straight shooter, you were in. “You’ll meet with him today?”

  “We’ve got an appointment for later this morning.”

  “Good. Ask questions. Take notes.”

  “Yes, Dad.” Amelia shook her head. Sometimes, to her father, she was still sixteen and new to jobs, to the world, to life in general. “I got this.”

  “Vic knows a lot of people. If he’s happy with you, his word alone will probably get you more business.