From Florida With Love: Sunsets & Happy Endings

From Florida With Love

Sunsets & Happy Endings

by

Karen Dean Benson

Patricia Campbell

Allan Dyen-Shapiro

M. A. Ellis

Sonja Gunter

M. L. Joy

Doris Lemcke

Mariah Lynne

A. Y. Stratton

Diana Welker

Published by

Satin Romance

An Imprint of Melange Books, LLC

White Bear Lake, MN 55110

www.satinromance.com

The Fishy Place, Copyright 2014 Karen Dean Benson

The Deathbed Promise, Copyright 2014 Karen Dean Benson

Fred—A Dog’s Odyssey, Copyright 2014 Patricia Campbell

The Fundamental Things Apply, Copyright 2014 Allan Dyen-Shapiro

First Class All the Way, Copyright 2014 Sonja Gunter

Sunsets and Second Chances, Copyright 2014 by M. A. Ellis

The Portrait Conspiracy, Copyright 2014 M. L. Joy

Romantic Notions, Copyright 2014 Doris Lemcke

Love at First Flight, Copyright 2014 Mariah Lynne

Gulf Coast Heaven, Copyright 2014 A. Y. Stratton

Tickled Pink, Copyright 2014 Diana Welker

ISBN: 978-1-61235-903-8

Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published in the United States of America.

Cover Design by Caroline Andrus

This book is dedicated to all writers working to achieve their dream of publication.

FROM SUNSET WITH LOVE, SUNSETS & HAPPY ENDINGS

Southwest Florida Romance Writers (SWFRW) offers a unique anthology with eleven original stories. They each feature a gorgeous Southwest Florida sunset, pink flamingos in all forms, and romance. Enjoy enchanting tales about love, including old and new love, lost love, second chances, and even puppy love.

The characters range from a Spanish lady, rambunctious Active Seniors, a lovesick flamingo, an international spy and everything in between. Read them all in one sitting or savor each one as a separate adventure in front of your own special sunset. Be ready to laugh, they will touch your heart and mist your eyes.

The Fishy Place by Karen Dean Benson

The Deathbed Promise by Karen Dean Benson

Fred—A Dog's Odyssey by Patricia Campbell

The Fundamental Things Apply by Allan Dyen-Shapiro

Sunsets and Second Chances by M. A. Ellis

First Class All the Way by Sonja Gunter

The Portrait Compiracy by M. L. Joy

Romantic Notions by Doris Lemcke

Love at First Flight by Mariah Lynne

Gulf Coast Heaven by A. Y. Stratton

Tickled Pink by Diana Welker

Previews

The Fishy Place

by Karen Dean Benson

Frustration creeps up my bones like crawling ants and nips at my fingertips. I’m alone in this little apartment and feel the urge to lash out. Ranting on a blank page of my computer will have to be the balm for my inner savage beast rearing its ugly head. I’m a writer and my grandmother and mother's stories itch to be told. How to begin? All the social turmoil in this place keeps me from settling to the task.

A long life brings me, Erin O’Banyon, no satisfaction right now. I’m far too concerned with Phases I, II, III, and IV of the Fish Tail Manor and Resort for the Elderly to concentrate on anything productive, and certainly not writing.

About six months ago, my eldest, Patrick, dumped me in Phase II at the ripe age of eighty-five. Believe me; I’ve come to learn being the oldest in Phase II is an accomplishment. If I fought for my rights, I could probably go back to Phase 1, but I no longer hold the controls to my future. In a weak moment, I signed them off to Patrick. Heck, I think he belongs in Phase III, except they don’t deal with alcoholics here.

I can’t blame it all on Patrick, I confess Fish Tail Manor and Resort held an allure when I lived in my own home. Someone else to cook and clean, no bills to pay, no upkeep. Mowing four acres was a weekly chore that consumed what time I have left. I traded all that for 24 hours, seven days a week that are all mine. I could probably arrange to have my butt wiped if I asked.

Fishy business is what I call this place. I play euchre on Wednesday evenings. On Thursday, they carted my euchre partner off to Phase III. You just never know, do not see it coming. I sure didn’t, we won the game largely due to her finessing.

Staff can be blindsided, also. We all know a client can unexpectedly bypass Phase I, II, III, and IV and head straight to the morgue.

Condo to casket, I say. Like playing Monopoly. Oops, she landed on death row, oh, no, it’s only Phase IV. The reality is that this is the end of the road at Fishy place. Makes one wish the movie Cocoon wasn’t fiction.

I never could win at Monopoly. Nevertheless, I’ve outlived three husbands, am as healthy as an ox, walk several miles a day, and can’t seem to winch down my brain. This serves me well as I pour through more than one hundred years of letters and newspapers from Saginaw and Detroit, Michigan that I’m trying to put in book form.

Before moving here, when I still lived in my home, walls and shelves spilled over with books, artifacts and relics collected on world travels. Of all my possessions, my adult children packed letters my ancestors wrote. Paper sacks crinkled and fragile with age, stale with basement mildew, burst with memories of lives well lived. My children decided I would need a hobby; thus, the sacks accompanied me here, to fishy place. Apparently, they knew I'd have time a plenty on my hands.

The day I became aware that this written history existed was in the fall of 1985 when my mother delivered them to me. That same day, she also announced she was having a heart valve replaced and needed someone to drive her to U/M Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan. My two brothers and I scrambled to talk her out of it but she kept repeating she wanted quality of life.

Can you beat that? Quality of life? She was seventy-nine at the time and drove her own car, lived alone, smoked every day, and loved beer, though diabetes put a bit of a crimp in that activity. Poor thing, she made it through the surgery fine, but the valve they prepared for her was too big and they kept her on machines while they found one small enough. By the time they finished surgery and weaned her from the machines, her organs had lost their gusto. She never left the ICU ward and three months later died on St. Paddy’s day, a wee colleen to the end.

I always intended to write her life story, but my six children and all those husbands got in the way. Unbelievably, it has taken incarceration in this place to settle me down long enough to read the letters.

You would think at my age most things wouldn’t shock me. Better yet, I simply wouldn’t give a hot dang. Nevertheless, reading the history and categorizing them into years is humbling. My mother’s stamina and determination to overcome some of the worst life had to offer fills me with latent awe and respect.

I feel like a blundering idiot. Do I begin when she was the baby in the family, not yet five, and her father abandoned them, only to be found twenty years later with another wife and children? The desertion cost my mother plenty, emotionally. She traced his grave, in unconsecrated ground because he’d committed suicide, to St. Louis, Missouri.

Isn’t that the berries? I finally get to a time where I’m sitting at my desk sorting out my thoughts and the dinner-gong bongs. I’ll get back to this maybe tomorrow.

I hate that blasted gong. It makes me feel like a cow plodding to the trough. When I leave my apartment, I’ll be in a herd of my dearest and best friends, all fifty of them who live on this floor. They’ll fight for the elevator and wiggle in, elbowing each other. I can still take the stairs. Thank God Phase II has stairs. Had enough of that elevator my first day here.

Oops, I forgot I signed up for a bus trip to Corkscrew Nature Preserve. We leave after lunch.

It’s evening now. I’m in a better frame of mind after the adventure to the nature preserve. Our outing held some unusual twists, even for me.

The bus was jammed with my nearest and dearest. Bobbing white heads and metal walkers and canes plunked down in the front of the bus. By the time I climbed on board, I gingerly edged my way to the very back.

Walter Mature, I laugh at his name, because he sure is all of that, wrinkled and near bald, sat next to me and didn’t rest his jaws the entire ride. I’ve noticed him a time or two playing Euchre. He had the gall to ask if he could be my partner next Wednesday. It was almost as if he knew my other partner wouldn’t be around anymore. I considered his offer in two ways; he was either insensitive as a mule to intrude on the loss of a friend of mine, or he had gumption.

I didn’t answer him and scooted closer to the window. I hoped he might think my batteries blew out. A satchel I carried held some of the letters I intended to read as we whistled along forty-one to the swamp. Walter Mature scooted right with me and I felt his eyes scanning the letter in my hand. It was dated 1902 and my grandmother had written to her eldest daughter, my Aunt Lucille, who’d been sent to Detroit to live with an uncle now that the family was destitute after the father abandoned them. My grandmother lied to an insurance company and said he died so she could get the little bit of money. At that point, she didn’t really lie, she hadn’t a clue what happened to him. And, to ease the financial burden, the priest at St. Mary’s hired her as housekeeper to tide her over. Ten years were to pass when a friend of grandmother’s saw her husband coming out of a bank in St. Louis, Missouri.

Walter’s breath was on my cheek. He had his nerve. I glared at him and he had the decency to unpeel his eyes from my letter and sit back against the black vinyl bench. I folded the letter, tucked it back in the satchel, and put my attention to the scrub landscape.

You’ve kept that letter over one hundred years. May I ask who wrote it? I glanced at him as he pushed his glasses back up his nose.

My grandmother. My mother’s mother.

Are there any surprises?

My hand caressed the canvas bag. I’d only brought five letters with me. Five out of probably two hundred. Not yet. But I know enough of their history to know the likelihood.

You’ve set yourself a noble project. He patted his baldhead with a kerchief. The air conditioning wasn’t reaching the back of the bus.

The bus swerved with some construction and my shoulder punched Mr. Mature. I would have apologized, but at that moment he lifted his arm to put behind me and I cast him what I hoped was a don’t-you-dare-trespass-on-my-person glare.

He flexed his fingers, placed both his hands on his knees, and stared straight ahead. His glasses slipped down his sweaty nose.

I hugged the uncomfortable metal wall of the bus and did my best to pretend he didn’t exist. I spent the time thinking of my mother’s and grandmother’s letters, wondering if I did know their complete history. When we finally arrived at the swamp there was quite a commotion exiting the bus and entering the preserve. The burly bus driver hand delivered almost every occupant to the planked walkway and in many cases opened up the metal walkers. His face blotched with the humidity. A good-natured man, he laughed and smiled with his duties.

I scooted faster than most to a deck that hangs out over the lowland, saturated with water, where you can watch the ibis and heron feed. I’ve been to the swamp before but this is the first time I see a flamingo. A gawky kind of bird, they usually fly in groups, this one was a loner. I read a book by the famous birder John Audubon. He was a painter and naturalist, he noted a flock of flamingo in the Florida Keys in 1832. Having read that, most folks don’t realize the flamingo is not natural to Florida.

Like a gaggle of geese, gray heads bobbed along with metal walkers and canes and clanked their way up the boardwalk to the deck, pushing and shoving their way to the railing. My sandaled feet were in peril so I moved aside. A whole flock of Rosette Spoonbills winged in, a beautiful cloud of pale pink spluttered into the pond, reed thin legs settling into the scum. Their bills flat like paddles.

We’re in a drought right now in southwest Florida, so this pond, which is designated a lake, has shrunk. In Michigan where I lived a good portion of my life, this is a puddle. Not much room for the heron now. He poked his tiny beaked head into the air and flapped his wings at the intrusion of the spoonbills settling to feed. They’d obviously scattered his lunch.

The scene reminds me of a diorama teaming with life. I stretched my neck to see to the far side of the pond. Spaniards beard flapped in the breeze, cutting a clear view of a gator. They always remind me of a discarded, blown-out tire until they move.

By golly, the gator’s eyes shifted, indicating he searched for a snack. Did he eye the flamingo? His patience was impressive. Not so the metal canes and walkers. One thing about aging folks, they all seem to be short and require the need to be upfront, first at the railing. My ankles protected, I edged to the corner of the deck and hung on. Unlike the seniors maneuvering for space, the gator didn’t make a ripple.

A brown water snake coiled along a branch on the other side of the pond, his forked tongue slicing the air. Knowing they feed on frogs and fish, he probably finished with lunch or he’d be slithering along the edge of the filmy layer of pond scum.

The scent of the pond, smoldering in the heat, calls to mind a powerful musky aroma stirring memories of places I’ve been; a gothic library with a dungeon-like basement in Detroit that I frequented as a young girl. A special favorite was a used bookstore in Dinky Town situated just off the campus of the University of Minnesota. The shelves teamed with the incense of who we are and from where we come. A thick molder reminded me I’m alive.

As a young girl, I used to visit the cave-like structures beneath cathedrals with my grandmother. We called them grottos. The mystery and lure of the darkened corners, filled with the incense of melted candle wax, was perfume for my young soul. Now, with my eyes closed, I take a deep breath of the life and death here in the jungle like atmosphere of Corkscrew preserve. Disparate as they are, the grottos and this preserve give me a sense of reason for being, makes me feel part of the structure.

A sudden splash, and my eyes spring wide chasing the memories back into their corner. The water show is over in a split second. Like the red velvet curtain on a drama, the gator snapped his mouth on a spoonbill, the snake slithered to another branch, the heron pointed his beak and took wing, and a cloud of pink followed in his wake.

The flamingo could have been a plastic lawn ornament, one leg bent upward, its concentration on a meal never wavered, even when ripples swept the surface of the pond.

OOhhs and aahhs rose from the grey-haired canes and walkers. Mr. Mature, unbeknownst to me, stood close behind. He placed his hand atop mine as it rested on the railing and said, That we could fly away, too.

It was nearing sunset over the swamp, blistering rays of light beamed through the palm fronds and aged cedar and oaks. A patch of sandy beach, on the far edge of the pond, etched with the prints of wildlife.

I looked at the gnarled hand atop mine, then upward at Mr. Mature’s watery eyes wondering what was on his mind. I asked, How are you at finessing tricks?

If his bushy eyebrows didn’t instantly flag in the air, I’m not an aging crab. To what did he think I was referring? Men! I lifted his hand off mine and let it drop back to the railing, turned on my heel and walked away. I made darn sure to sit between two women on the ride back to Fishy Haven.

Three days later, I rode the elevator up to the tenth floor rather than take the stairs. My arthritis in my left knee was bothering me a bit. There is only one elevator and fourteen floors. This used to be a Hyatt rising like a Phoenix on the edge of the Caloosahatchee. A stucco building, pink like the flamingo. Driving across the bridge into North Fort Myers, you can’t miss this aging relic.

In order to get to my apartment in less than an hour from the common dining room, I have to be quick like a jackrabbit after mealtime. The Otis is as slow as a tortoise. Folks get off one floor at time, up it vibrates until it finally empties. As we make our way upward, I visualize the waiting line in the lobby, winding like a snake about the marble floor. The metal walkers and canes baby step toward the shiny metal doors. Full up, the twin doors slowly close and once again, it shimmies upward floor by floor. The metal walkers, especially, take up so much room; five folks are a packed ride. I could suggest an organizational plan, but I’d rather complain.

I managed to be the first on and because I live on the tenth floor, scooted to the back. Nine of us without metal walkers got on, and wouldn’t you know Mr. Mature was the tenth. He either didn’t see me or was ignoring me, which suited me just fine. Tonight was euchre night and I hadn’t decided what to do. He’d been the only one to ask about being my partner. As far as I am concerned, he can keep his bushy, testosterone brows to himself.

Slowly the Otis emptied and, by the time we arrived at my floor, there were six of us, counting Mr. Mature. I wasn’t sure on what floor he lived. Didn’t much care either.

The doors opened, I excused myself from the back and was about to cross the threshold when Mr. Mature said, Hold the elevator while I walk my girlfriend to her door.

Can you imagine my shock? I don’t know when the last time was that I blushed, but I felt the heat rise on my face. I blamed him for my embarrassment. I glanced at the occupants of the elevator and noted a smirk on Eleanor’s sourpuss. John, the only black in the elevator, flashed an even row of very white teeth, and his brows rose like feathery angel wings against his dark skin. What is it with men and their eyebrows?

Mr. Mature put his arm out to hold the elevator door and I stepped across to the carpeted hallway. Wait for me, he said as he turned to the others.

I tried to hide a supreme sense of satisfaction. I couldn’t deny it—to myself that is. He certainly wouldn’t know the enjoyment I felt at his rather courteous display.

We walked to my door without a word spoken. I turned the key in the lock and his hand pressed on mine. He said, My dear Mrs. O’Banyon, I promise not to embarrass you at euchre if you will be my partner tonight.

I could hear the elevator thumping against itself, as the doors held open. In addition, I thought of all those metal walkers and canes lined up, patiently waiting for the return of the Otis to the ground floor. My crotchety old self turned a smile on him, couldn’t help it, it just happened, just like that. I’ll meet you in the card room at seven.

We stayed after the game was finished and ate cakes and drank decaf tea. Mr. Mature