The Way Back to Happiness by Elizabeth Bass Page A

got into his truck and drove away, she’d collapse in relief to be alone again. Was a life as Mrs. Derek Matthews really her destiny? Was he really what she wanted?
    Of course he was. Why else would she have broken it off with Glen? She had pursued Derek, who was more of her ideal. She wasn’t shallow, but everyone knew you couldn’t build a relationship if the physical part wasn’t right. Derek reminded her a little of Tom—unpredictable. Although other than that they were night and day.
    Her breathing stilled as her mother’s words echoed in her head. You still want what Diana had.
    Why had her mother flung those words at her? Diana had been the covetous one. Diana was the one who’d taken what she’d wanted, consequences be damned.
    The impulse to dig out her old photograph album spurred Bev to the hallway. She looked up at the square in the ceiling, the entry to the attic. All she had to do was reach up and draw down the ladder. Yet she resisted. So many nights had been lost that way—staring at photos of Tom, wallowing in memories until she was messy drunk on them. She’d finally stowed the pictures out of easy reach.
    Of course, her memory didn’t require a visual prompt. Her mind could spin her back through the decades all on its own, but she’d done a fairly good job of training it to avoid the more maudlin pathways. Or she thought she had . . . until she’d looked into Alabama’s eyes. They were Tom’s eyes—brown, not Diana’s blue-green. Alabama didn’t have Diana’s auburn hair, either, but a dull blond closer to Bev’s own. Looking at her, she could almost imagine how it would have been if . . .
    No.
    Familiar footsteps tromped up the front stairs, and Bev hurried to the front door to meet Cleta, the mailwoman. Letter carrier, she corrected herself. During the school year, Bev was rarely at home when the mail arrived, but in summer Cleta was sometimes the only person she talked to all day long.
    “Hey there,” Cleta said, surprised when Bev opened the door. “I didn’t expect to find you here today. Thought you were going to Big D.”
    “I got back early.”
    “Good for you. Gives you time to enjoy your Saturday instead of battling Dallas traffic.”
    She handed Bev a bundle of mail and tapped the envelope on the top of the stack. “Sorry about that one. Got misdirected—address was wrong, I guess. By the looks of it you’d think it’d been to China and back.” She laughed. “Maybe it has. Anyhow, the envelope got ripped somewhere and somebody taped it back up, but I doubt it was actually tampered with.”
    Distracted, Bev didn’t even look at the letter. “I’d rather you apologized for the junk. All these catalogs! Do so many people actually order things by phone?”
    Cleta’s gaze rolled toward the sky-blue painted porch ceiling. “Whoo-ee! They certainly do. Mark my words, the day’s coming when folks won’t leave their La-Z-Boys even to buy groceries. Everything’ll come mail order. If that sounds like science fiction, believe you me, it’s not. Yesterday I delivered a frozen pot roast packed in dry ice to somebody.”
    Bev shook her head in amazement and commiseration, and then Cleta hitched her mailbag and marched off down the street.
    Bev retreated into the house, going straight for the trash can to deposit the catalogs and junk mail. Then she noticed the letter Cleta had been talking about, and stopped in her tracks. Scotch tape formed a jagged scar on the top of the envelope, but even more notable were the cross-outs and scrawled corrections across the front in different colors of ink, in several hands. Not at this address. Returned. Redirected. And at the center, the heart of all the chaos, a familiar loopy handwriting chilled Bev’s blood.
    Diana’s handwriting.
    She hadn’t seen it in years, except on the occasional letter lying around Gladys’s.
    Why would Diana have written her? How could she have written her?
    She squinted at the postmark. It was from