The Do-Over Read Online Free PDF Page B

impart the will to go. Janie only wished she had a daughter to pass the knowledge on to.
    Stella sneezed. “Bless me.”
    Janie blinked.
    Stella went back to her pie, and Janie felt robbed of a mentoring moment. “That’s it?”
    Stella reached for her coffee. “Oh, you were expecting me to help you? Tell you something so amazing you couldn’t wait to get back home to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and clean the john?”
    Janie sat back. When Stella put it that way, it sounded like a job no one would want.
    “I was married for thirty-five years before I lost my husband. We raised four kids, and I have five grandchildren. Two years ago we started Abundance, and it keeps me busy. I’ve had a good life, but it doesn’t have anything to do with yours.”
    Janie felt her mouth open, and when nothing came out, she closed it.
    “When it comes to marriage, I don’t think you have to stay together until somebody dies to win. When it comes to raising kids, you do your best, but you have to take care of yourself too, or they won’t be taken care of very well.” Stella shrugged. “I don’t know much more than that.”
    Well, okay. That was a lot to know.
    Stella waved for the waitress to bring more coffee. “You don’t want to go back tonight.”
    That much she did know. “I don’t.”
    “Then don’t go.” Stella lifted her coffee cup to the waitress. “Thank you.”
    Janie started to cover her cup with her hand. She’d be up all night. Four o’clock was a reasonable cut-off for caffeinated beverages. She lifted her cup instead. “Thank you.”
    Stella reached into her purse and pulled out a set of keys, placing them on the table between them. “Once when my husband and I were new parents, we were in a restaurant with our first girl, Laurie. She was just a toddler and squirmy, and we were doing our best to keep her busy. We didn’t eat out much back then.”
    Janie remembered the baby days with Logan and how once they’d taken him to a movie in desperation to get out, only to have him cry so loudly, they had to run out of the theater.
    “We were just finishing our dinner and pretty frustrated from all the work, and this older woman comes up to our table and gives Laurie a dollar bill. She said this is a good little girl. I’d like to treat her to an ice cream .”
    Janie could picture Stella and her husband, young and struggling. That woman had done them a kindness. And wasn’t that sometimes all it took?
    “With that ice cream dollar, she told us it was okay, and we felt like it was.” She took a drink of coffee, and Janie waited, pleased to know that Stella’s pauses were worth waiting for. “I have a loft apartment next door to Abundance. It’s right above Gretchen’s clothing store. Haven’t gotten around to renting it after the last tenant.” Stella took a big hunk of pie on her fork. “You can stay if you want.”
    Janie felt herself tear up. A dollar for ice-cream. Another night, another day. She could drive Wednesday and get to Seattle in time to check out of the hotel. She’d be home before anyone missed her.

Chapter 2
    She opened the door between the Abundance shop and the vintage clothing store. The stairwell, narrow and sharply lit with a bank of florescent lights, took her to the apartment door. She keyed it and stepped into the dark loft, feeling along the wall until she found the lights and flicked them on. It lived up to the name loft, large and open, with a floor that seemed to spread like a sea of dark wood. Along one wall, windows spanned from ceiling to floor and brought in the streetlight from below.
    But it was the wash of yellow, the sunshine glow the walls held even at night that made her want to stay. The ceiling, so high it should have felt cavernous, reflected back the warmth of citrus. She walked across the room to the small kitchen, cozy and inefficient, and she instantly loved it. The bar, separating the kitchen and living area, was just large enough for two.