Ladies' Night by Andrews, Kay (popular books of all time .TXT) 📕

“Yeah. Did you know him?”

“Everybody in Manatee County knew Butch Davenport. He was quite a character. Is he still around?”

“No, he passed away a few years ago. Rochelle, Grace’s mom, runs the Sandbox now.”

“And what’s your connection to this Grace person?” Nelson frowned. “You going out with her? Hanging out in dive bars like the Sandbox with her? Before your divorce is final? You better hope Callie and her lawyer don’t get wind of that.”

“Callie is living with her boyfriend, and has been for months now, so I don’t think she has anything to say about my personal life. Anyway, like I just told you, Grace is in my divorce-recovery group. The whole group goes to the Sandbox after our meetings, just to sort of unwind. I have a beer or two and come home. End of story.”

“But you like this girl.”

“I do,” Wyatt nodded. “She’s a nice person. You’d like her, too.”

“You sleeping with her?”

Wyatt felt his face burn. “Jesus, Dad! No. Where’d you get an idea like that?”

Nelson shrugged but said nothing else.

Wyatt pulled the golf cart under the carport and switched it off. Nelson unfolded himself from the seat, grunting with the effort, clutching the side of the cart for balance, swaying a little as he stood, trying to catch his breath.

And it struck Wyatt again: his father was aging before his eyes. The vagueness, forgetfulness, especially in the evenings, these had crept up and even accelerated since Wyatt had moved in with him. Nelson had always been strong—even into his sixties; he was fit and used to hard physical labor. Now, though, his gait had slowed and his energy level was diminished. It was all he could do to putter around the gift shop or the office a few hours in the morning before he returned to the cottage for a nap and endless hours of television.

He followed Nelson into the cottage, making sure the old man got safely into his bed before walking around the cramped cottage, switching off the lights and the television. The thin walls seemed to close in on him, choking him with claustrophobia. Sweetie followed close on his heels, seemingly sensing Wyatt’s restlessness.

He held the back door open. “Come on then, let’s go for a midnight ride.”

*   *   *

As the cart jolted along the shell pathway, the headlight picked out the shaggy, overgrown landscape. Just like his father, Jungle Jerry’s was aging, and not gracefully. Even the moonlight did not become it.

In his mind, Wyatt ticked off the unending items of maintenance that needed tending to. The gift shop’s roof was leaking badly. He’d patched it so many times himself that the patches outnumbered the original asphalt roofing. The crushed-shell parking lot was pocked with potholes and washouts, and half the neon in the Jungle Jerry’s sign had burned out.

In the park itself, dead or half-dead trees stood, waiting to be trimmed or cut down. The flower beds were choked with weeds and vines, and the abundant rain-forest plants swallowed whole sections of the pathways. His earlier visit to the amphitheater reminded him that half the benches there were rotted or splintered and all of them needed painting or replacing. The aviaries his grandfather had built decades ago for the tropical birds were rusting and were too small by current-day standards.

And that was just the physical plant, Wyatt mused. With only three employees—him; Joyce, his bookkeeper, ticket taker, and gift-shop manager; and Eduardo, who helped out with maintenance and landscaping—there were never enough bodies or hours or funds to get everything done.

Probably, Wyatt thought, he should have been smarter about all this. Six years earlier, not long before Bo’s birth, a developer had offered to buy the park from the family for what seemed like a stunning amount of money—three million. His parents had considered taking the money and making the deal, but Wyatt, young and stupid and full of plans and dreams for the family business he intended to nurture for his unborn son—had urged them not to sell. How could they let a shopping center and yet another condo complex erupt on this gorgeous garden his grandparents had worked so hard to create?

Even then, Jungle Jerry’s was struggling. They weren’t losing money, but they weren’t making much money either. Wyatt was certain he could turn things around. He’d taken marketing classes in college, had all kinds of ideas to drag the park into the twenty-first century. Callie had been furious with him. How could he be so stupid? All that money would have set them up for life! She’d raged at him for weeks after his parents turned down all that delicious money.

And then, before he could even get a Web site designed for the park, the economy tanked. Their attendance figures plummeted, and developers quit calling. Every month, the aging park went deeper into debt.

Wyatt steered the golf cart through the empty parking lot, hanging onto Sweetie’s collar to keep her from flying off as the cart jounced through the potholes.

He fought the urge to surrender to the melancholy mood of the evening. Not everything in his life was crap. Earlier in the day he’d won one tiny battle against Callie. Starting tomorrow, he would have Bo for the weekend. He glanced over at Sweetie, sitting erect on the golf cart beside him. And maybe, just maybe, he would find a way to convince the dog’s real owner that he wasn’t such a total jerk after all.

33

She’d set her alarm for 6:00 A.M. Her to-do list for Mandevilla was long and getting longer, and she was eager to get to work. Grace opened her laptop and clicked on the comments section of TrueGrace.

This was her favorite part of blogging. Styling, photographing, writing, editing, and coming up with new ideas fed her creative soul, but hearing from readers was what kept her motivated. When she’d first started writing Gracenotes, she would stay up for hours after publishing a post, clicking and refreshing, anxious and nervous to see if anybody