Excerpt of A Widow In Paradise by Donna Birdsell

Dannie Treat braced herself for the news. As she suspected, it wasn't good.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but she's dying. I did what I could, but she won't last long." The man in the white coat spoke in a solemn tone.

Dannie bit her lower lip to keep from crying. "There's no way to save her?"

"I'm afraid not."

Dannie's five-year-old son, Richard, reached up and took her hand. "Is it my fault, Mommy?"

"Not this time, honey. She's just old."

Dannie gave the ancient water heater a pat and followed the technician from Plumbing Doctor up the basement stairs into the kitchen.

Richard ran off into the living room and Dannie said a silent prayer to the angels who protect all things breakable.

"So you want to replace her?" the plumber asked.

Dannie sighed."I don't really have a choice, do I? Hot water isn't exactly a luxury."

"Only when you're camping."

Which was exactly what she and the kids were going to have to do in a few months when she couldn't afford luxuries like hot water, groceries or the mortgage anymore.

Every day the bills piled up and the balance in her bank account went down. She had to do something fast if she was going to keep a roof over their heads.

The insurance company was dragging its feet, refusing to pay on her husband Roger's policy since his death eight months before.They claimed they needed a death certificate from the authorities on Cuatro Blanco, the island where Roger had drowned, but those so-called authorities apparently moved at the speed of a mentally challenged slug.

She'd even had her lawyer contact them several times, until she realized he was charging her three hundred an hour to argue over the phone with a Cuatro Blanco coroner's clerk.

Roger had also owned a ton of stock in the accounting firm where he'd worked, which automatically reverted back to the company on his death.This should have meant a big fat check for Dannie. But Wiser-Crenshaw's human resources manager had been dodging her calls, too.

So she'd gotten a job at Wee Ones Art Studio, teaching preschool art classes a couple times a week while a neighbor watched the kids. But her paycheck was barely enough to keep them in breakfast cereal.

So no more eating out, no more weekly trips to the ice cream parlor, no new toys except on birthdays. Steaks on the grill had become hamburgers, they got their books from the library instead of the bookstore, and she'd turned off the premium channels on cable.

Dannie had given up things she'd become accustomed to, as well, like expensive perfume and pretty new shoes and decent chocolate. Hell, she'd given up cheap perfume, functional shoes and bad chocolate, too.

But she'd be damned if she was going to give up hot baths. They were one of the few luxuries she had left in this world. Come hell or cold water, she was going to find the money to buy a new water heater.

Dannie pushed an unruly blond curl behind her ear. Her in-laws would lend her the money if she asked. God knew they had enough of it. But there would be strings attached. There always were.

No, she was going to do this herself. She just had to figure out how.

She'd already sold most of the paintings she'd done in her life before Roger—before she'd closed her paint boxes to become a good wife and an attentive mother. The ones she'd saved either weren't good enough to sell or she couldn't bear to part with them.

She had to find another solution.

As she was shutting the basement door, something at the bottom of the stairs caught her eye. The exercise bike.

And next to the exercise bike, a box of paperback novels. And next to that the Ping-Pong table. Stuff she was never going to use again. Stuff she could sell at a yard sale!

With the Columbus Day weekend coming up, it was perfect timing.

Dannie smiled. "Hello, new hot water heater."

Half an hour later she had a pile of junk by the front door, mined from the recesses of the basement, dusty but still functional. She was about to tackle the garage when she heard her eighteen-month-old twins, Erin and Emma, babbling on the monitor.

Nap time was over.

She braced herself for the afternoon onslaught, which included lunch for four kids—Dannie's own consisted of the crusts from four peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, a rubbery stalk of celery and one soggy bread stick—a mad dash to get Richard to afternoon kindergarten, and a quick trip to the vet to dislodge the arm of a toy robot from the throat of her lovable but senseless behemoth of a dog, Quincy, who had a tendency to eat shiny objects.

Thus it was two o'clock before she could get back to her hunt for salable items.

She put the twins up for their afternoon nap, put her four-year-old daughter, Betsy, in front of the TV and set off for the garage.

It was a chilly and dark space, a place Dannie had avoided since Roger's death.

Roger had transformed it into a workshop and had been restoring an old sailboat there, before he died.

The boat still sat upside down on crude wooden stands in the middle of the garage floor.The length of it reached across the entire three-car garage, with just enough room to walk on either side. Its hull almost touched the ceiling. At twenty-two feet, it wasn't a large boat. But it sure was pretty.

The lines were clean and unfussy, the deck still in excellent condition. Roger had hoped to get it into the water by the end of the summer. Unfortunately, summer had never come for him.

Dannie picked a piece of sandpaper up off the floor and rubbed it over the side of the boat, blowing off the dust it produced.Tears welled in her eyes.

The name of the boat was lettered on the back, outlined in black but not yet painted in. Treat's Dream.

She supposed she should sell it, but she just couldn't. Not yet.

Maybe she'd try to finish it, and put it in the water.A tribute to Roger. She wasn't much of a sailor—was a little scared of the ocean, to be honest. But it seemed like a fitting tribute. Maybe Roger's best friend, Lyle, would help her.

Turning her attention to the business at hand, she set about finding stuff she could sell at the yard sale.

Against the far wall of the garage, forgotten sports equipment stood as disheveled and dirty as seventh-grade boys lined up for gym class. A scarred ice-hockey stick, a torn badminton net, an unstrung tennis racquet.

She gathered it all up in her arms and pushed the button for the automatic garage door with her elbow. It went halfway up, then stopped.

Great. Fabulous. One more thing to fix.

She tried again, but the door got stuck at the same place. She peered up into the rafters of the garage, and noticed something wedged there. A leather bag of some sort was stopping the door.

She dropped all the stuff she'd been holding and lowered the garage door. Dragging a ladder over, she set it up beneath the rafters and climbed up. She reached for the bag, her hand catching a tangle of spiderwebs.

"Mommy?"

Dannie nearly fell off the ladder. "Jeez, Bets.You scared me. What is it?"

"Can I have a snack?"

"Sure."

"What?"

"Something good for you."

"Is candy good for me?"

"No."

"Marshmallows?"

"No, they're just like candy."

"A Popsicle?"

"No, honey. Popsicles aren't good for you."

"Then what is?"

"Carrots. An apple. Celery."

Betsy rolled her big blue eyes. "All the gross stuff."

"Okay. I'll be there in a minute, and I'll get something for you."

Betsy lingered by the door.

"Is there something else?"

"Quincy ate a bug."

Dannie wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her arm."Good.We can't afford the exterminator anymore."

Betsy kicked the doorjamb with her toe. "Are we poor, Mommy?"

Dannie sighed. "No, we're not poor. Not yet, anyway. And if we get enough stuff together for this yard sale, maybe we'll get rich. Now, go back in the house. I'll be there in a minute."

Betsy disappeared, leaving the door wide open, the heat sucking into the cold garage.

Dannie reached up and grabbed the leather bag, trying to pull it down from the rafters. It wouldn't budge. She climbed up the next step of the ladder, and could now see that it was a golf bag, wedged lengthwise between two beams.

She untangled the shoulder strap, giving it a yank.Just then Quincy bounded through the open door and into the garage, charging straight for her.

"No, Quincy. No!"

The dog flung his giant, shaggy tan body at the ladder, grabbing for the leg of Dannie's jeans. The ladder toppled over, leaving Dannie swinging from the golf bag strap. The rafters creaked ominously.

"Oh, shhhh—"

The bag pulled free of the beams, sending Dannie plummeting to the floor and landing on top of her with a thud.

"—it."

Dannie blinked, and then blinked again, certain she must be seeing things. It wasn't possible.

Money.

It was all over her.

She sat up slowly. A cascade of hundred-dollar bills slid off her body and pooled around her like a chalk outline. Quincy picked one up in his mouth and danced around her.

"Quincy, no. Bring that here."

Quincy wagged his tail and gave her a mischievous look, then trotted around the perimeter of the garage with the bill hanging out of his mouth like a green tongue.

Dannie corralled him between the boat and the wall and grabbed his collar. She pried his jaws open and took the money from his mouth. Then she herded him back into the house, pulling the door closed behind him.

She stared at the hundred in her hand.

This was a dream. It had to be. Who finds thousands of dollars in golf bags in the rafters of their garage?

She rounded the boat and saw the bag lying on top of the pile of money.

Apparently she had.

She knelt, raking the money together with her fingers, then forming tidy stacks of ten on the cold floor. Lots of stacks.

She counted them twice.

Thirty-one, plus the six hundred she held in her hand.

"Thirty-one thousand, six hundred dollars." She said it out loud, just to make it real.

Questions roared through her mind at the speed of a freight train.Whose golf bag was it? As far as she knew, Roger had never played a round of golf in his life, much less owned a golf bag.

Why was it filled with cash? Roger, a CPA, wasn't one to be careless with money. She doubted he knew it was there.

In that case, where had it come from?

It was an old house. Perhaps it had been there since they'd bought the place, and the garage door had shaken it loose from the rafters. But how could she never have noticed it?

And finally what was she going to do with it? If she deposited it in the bank, would there be questions? Would she have to claim it on her income tax?

She needed some time to think.To research.To roll around naked in all those bills.

She gathered up the money in two fists, took it into the house and put it in a plastic freezer bag.As an afterthought, she took one of the bills out and tucked it into her bra. She deserved a finder's fee, didn't she?

She emptied a box of freezer-burned hot dogs into the trash and stuffed the money into the box.There.

Betsy ran into the kitchen wearing nothing but fairy wings and hiking boots.

"What's that, Mommy? Are we having hot dogs for a snack?"

"Nope. It's the answer to our prayers."Dannie pushed the box to the back of the freezer, behind a pile of ice pops. It would have to suffice until she figured out what she was going to do with it.

"What did you pray for?" Betsy asked.

"A new water heater."

"That's boring. I would pray for a Moon Bounce. And Emma and Erin are awake."

"Okay. I'll get them."

Betsy stood in the doorway, twisting her hair around her finger. It was a habit she'd picked up from Dannie.

"Was there something else?" Dannie said.

Betsy pointed past her.

Dannie turned around. Quincy had his big head in the trash can, scarfing down frozen hot dogs.

"Hey, save some room for the caviar we're gonna be having tomorrow, Quince."

He looked at her and burped.

"Gross," Betsy said. Then she ran off, her bare bottom the last thing to disappear around the corner.

Dannie pulled the hundred-dollar bill out of her bra and stared at it, still unable to believe she had three hundred and fifteen more just like it in her freezer.

The answer to their prayers.

Bythree o'clock, Erin had thrown up in the car,Emma had drawn a mural in permanent marker on the bathroom wall and Quincy had knocked over the potted palm in the sunroom.

Betsy was still naked.

By three-thirty, Richard had stuffed a tennis ball into the garbage disposal, ripped seventeen pages out of the phone book and melted a plastic army guy in the microwave.

Betsy was still naked.

By three forty-five, Quincy had eaten the melted army guy, Emma and Erin were fighting and Richard had attempted to climb the living room drapes while dressed in his Spider-Man Halloween costume.

Betsy was still naked.

By four o'clock, Dannie knew exactly what she was going to do with the money in her bra…

Spend it on margaritas.

She picked up the phone and called her friend Roseanna at work. "Rosie, it's Dannie. We're going out tomorrow night."