Luck Be a Lady - Cathie Linz [94]
Or so Marissa hoped. Not that hoping, wishing or even praying had helped her out much lately. The bottom line was that her life had completely fallen apart over the past year. And now here she was, heading back home in a used and dented lime green VW Bug. The eyesore of a car was a necessity, not a choice.
Hopeful hadn’t changed much since Marissa had left to go to college over a decade ago. As she traveled along Washington Street, the main highway into town, she drove past the oak tree-filled campus of Midwest College. The ivy-covered brick buildings glowed in the May sunshine. It was Saturday afternoon, so the campus wasn’t as bustling as a weekday when classes were in session, but groups of students sat out under the trees, enjoying the fine weather.
Her father was a history professor at the college and had been for years. One of her earliest memories was of him carrying her on his shoulders to touch the abundance of crab apple blossoms in the trees lining the entrance to Birch Hall, where he had his office.
Marissa’s parents had wanted her to stay and attend Midwest College, but Marissa had had her heart set on attending Ohio State. She’d been eager to spread her wings and fly, excited about the world of possibilities open to her.
No, Hopeful hadn’t changed much . . . but Marissa had. Divorce and disillusionment did that to a woman. Knocked the stars from her eyes and turned her dreams to dust.
How different would her life be right now if she’d stayed in her hometown instead of leaving?
She wouldn’t have met and fallen for Brad Johnson. Wouldn’t have married him. Wouldn’t have caught him in their bed with another woman.
The humiliating memory cut clear through her so Marissa shoved it out of her mind for the time being. She’d been doing that a lot lately. Shoving thoughts away and locking them up somewhere deep inside her as if they were radioactive waste. It was the only way for her to cope with the fact that she’d lost the life she’d built. Living a mere hour outside of New York City had given her the best of both worlds—the culture and excitement of the big city and the suburban lifestyle. But that was all over now. Gone.
Infidelity had ended her marriage. Budget cuts had ended the job she had loved at the local library. The divorce had ended her ability to stay in the compact English-style cottage home of her dreams she’d shared with her husband. Her situation had started to seem hopeless before she’d been given this second chance in her hometown.
“What makes you want to return home?” library director Roz Jorgen had asked during Marissa’s interview at the Hopeful Memorial Library several weeks ago.
The fact that my life is a mess was not a suitably professional response so Marissa had come up with an alternative statement about not realizing the value of something until you were away from it for a while.
Marissa must have said something right during the lengthy interview with Roz and the library board, because they eventually offered her a job, and in doing so, offered her a lifeline when she desperately needed one.
So now she had a position at her old hometown library, where she’d gone to Story Hour as a kid and worked as a page shelving books while in high school. She slowed as she drove past the library building on the corner of Washington and Book Streets.
There were so many memories here. Her father had taken pride in telling her that the white Doric columns guarding the library’s front entrance were the same style found on the Parthenon in Greece. She wondered if her dad was proud of her now that she’d returned home after messing up so badly. Beyond the words, “Good luck,” he hadn’t said much when she’d come for the library interview several weeks ago.
Marissa had felt so stupid and useless after the divorce. Signing the divorce papers on her one-year anniversary hadn’t helped. She couldn’t even stay married