SWEET SATURDAY SAMPLES: AN EXCERPT -- MAY 18

Welcome to Sweet Saturday Samples, where we share snippets of our WIPs…and visit others who have shared theirs.

Today is my second opportunity to share and visit all of you.  I am continuing to excerpt from Interior Designs, a novel about second chances and learning from past mistakes.

Blurb:  Meet Martha Scott Cummings:  an interior designer, an abandoned wife, and a newly single mother to her daughter Meadow.  Now she must begin an interior journey to reexamine the life she had, the choices she made, and to find the strength to begin again.

In today’s snippet, our MC Martha and best friend Maeve have decided to take a vacation without the kids…and try their wings as single women.  They have chosen to drive from their Central Valley home to the Napa Valley.

We checked into one of the little cottages that dotted the curving lanes inside the resort.

We opened the door upon a living and dining area, and then gazed upon the little kitchenette, stocked with everything we would need; along the hallway, we discovered two bedrooms and two bathrooms.

We stashed our bags, not even beginning to unpack yet.  We leafed through the hand-outs from the front office, and noticed that there was a big “meet and greet” scheduled for this evening.  And it included a dinner.

Now we decided to open that bottle of wine we’d brought along:  a Napa Valley wine we’d purchased at home, to honor the occasion.

Sipping our drinks, we nibbled on some crackers and planned what we would wear tonight.

We still had a couple of hours to kill, so we decided to use the DVD player that came with the room.  We’d brought some of our own favorite movies, but I could see a selection stacked next to it.  “Oh, look!”  I cried out.  “I can’t even remember the last time I saw this one?”  I held up a copy of Vertigo.

“I’m game,” Maeve chimed in, grabbing the DVD and studying the back text.  “Yeah, I think I saw this way back in the day.  It should be good for whilin’ away those hours.”
We sat back on the sofa, our feet on the coffee table and watched the scenes playing out before us.

My thoughts kept veering away from the movie, though, as I wondered what we would discover in the days ahead.  Would we meet interesting men?  We could pretend we were just two single gals; we wouldn’t have to tell any of our deep, dark secrets.  We could be mysterious.  I smiled at the thought.

“Okay, I saw that look,” Maeve grinned.  “I’ll bet you weren’t thinkin’ about the movie, either.  Do tell!”

“I was just imagining us being all mysterious and not telling anything about ourselves.  We could even make up a backstory.  Wouldn’t that be fun?”

She laughed, momentarily caught up in the excitement of it.  “That would probably be best, anyhow,” she said.  “If we told our ‘secrets,’ we could possibly attract some kind of weirdo.  I mean, would normal guys be interested in the real us?”  She was smiling as she said this, but a shadow crossed her face.

“Oh, we’re in the twenty-first century, Maeve.  In this day and age, we could be considered catches.  Yeah, I think that’s definitely the case.”

Determined to move past these thoughts and images, we turned back to the movie, while on the wall, the clock ticked forward to the time when the adventures would begin.

***

Yes, beginnings are always challenging….and I have high hopes for Martha and Maeve.  Tune in for more next week!