A Chance of a Lifetime by Marilyn Pappano

Author:Marilyn Pappano
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2015-12-22T05:00:00+00:00

Bennie was so intent watching for the slightest sign of emotion to cross Calvin’s face that she forgot to breathe, a shortcoming she realized as soon as she tried to take a drink and choked on her tea. Coughing and sputtering, she accepted the napkin he offered, patted her eyes dry, and muffled one last cough before laying it aside to watch him again.

There was plenty of emotion crossing his face—anger, regret, bitterness, defeat, failure, sorrow. She had never known any details about their falling-out, just that J’Myel slowly stopped mentioning Calvin in his phone calls and e-mails, and when Calvin did come up, J’Myel was abrupt, hostile even. At some point, everything he said became dismissive, scathing, or derisive, and after a while, it was as if Calvin had never existed.

Bennie had pushed for answers from J’Myel—getting married without Calvin there had seemed impossible—but she’d learned nothing. Leave it alone, he’d told her repeatedly. It don’t matter. He don’t matter.

She had always thought that must have been her mother’s attitude toward her and her father. We didn’t matter, either. And it had never satisfied her need for a reason. Just one logical understandable reason.

Would Calvin tell her to leave it alone? Would he try to convince her that J’Myel didn’t matter? She was wondering when suddenly he slipped from his upright, on-alert rabbit’s posture, always ready to flee, and slumped back in his chair. “What did he tell you?”

She fiddled with the pendant she wore, a gold heart that J’Myel had given her right after they started dating. It had been surreal, finding herself intimate with her best bud, falling in love with the kid she’d played and run wild with practically her whole life. The necklace had helped make it more real.

“Nothing,” she said at last, “except that he didn’t want me talking to you. I was engaged to him. I was supposed to support his decisions.” One of her few regrets about her relationship with J’Myel. She should have stood up to him, the way she’d always stood up to other people, grabbed him by the ear like Gran would have done, and had a come-to-Jesus meeting with him.

Instead, she’d let him dictate to her, and she’d lost one of her very best friends. It wasn’t possible to have so many very best friends that you could throw one away without feeling the loss.

After another long moment, Calvin unclenched his jaw and shook his head. “Truth is…I don’t know.”

His response left an unsettled dissatisfaction seeping through her. “You must know something, Calvin. You were there, you were seeing him every day, talking to him, hanging out with him. Did you argue?”

He shook his head again, slowly side to side, his gaze distant. After a long time, he sighed, then answered in a low, heavy voice, “When we went in the Army, we were gonna have good times. We knew we were gonna go to war, but we were gonna kick ass and save the world. We were

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