She hadn’t had to audition to get a chance at being a contestant. She’d just had to print out her grandmother’s recipe for turkey dressing.
Even after she’d been notified she was a finalist, invited to be in the audience on Thanksgiving Day for the taping of the show, she hadn’t believed, that day in the studio, that she’d actually heard her name called.
It had been Dawson, sitting in her lap in the small, darkened studio, who’d recognized her name. His hoarse “Ma!” might have sounded like a very excitable grunt to everyone else there that day, but she’d heard her name. And his, too. “Me! Ma! Me!” Over and over again. As his butt bones dug into her thighs and his heels kicked new bruises into her shins.
Then she’d looked at the monitor, panning the audience for the day’s winner, and seen what Dawson had seen. His gargantuan grin, and her grimace of pain, splashed on national television.
Even now, six weeks later, she couldn’t believe she’d won. That in less than two hours she’d be in the studio, being filmed with the other candidates as they received a tour of their kitchens and instructions for the next four or five weeks of the competition. Four if none of her recipes won. Five if at least one did. Snippets of today’s pre-competition taping would be dubbed into shows in the weeks that followed.
So much had happened since she’d won the Thanksgiving competition.
She’d lost her job, but found another one making deliveries for a flower shop. She could work while Dawson was in preschool, and if there was an emergency, she could run by and pick him up. And she’d taken a second job with a political campaign, making cold calls to constituents from home. Neither paid very well. But both paid. And allowed her to attend every one of her son’s therapies.
A must if she was going to be able to repeat exercises at home.
Which was essential if any of it was going to be of benefit to her four-year-old son.
Pulling up in front of the house she’d felt more at home in than any other her entire life, Janie glanced at the car seat behind her. She hated to wake Dawson. He’d been fighting an ear infection and hadn’t been sleeping well.
But he loved Corrine and Joe Armstrong. And, by some miracle, they adored him back just as much. How she’d ever been blessed with such good friends, she had no idea, but...
The door to the ranch-style stucco home opened and Corrine came flying down the walk. “Hello, big boy,” she said, a huge grin on her face as she opened the back door. And then stopped when she saw Dawson asleep.
“You’re going to be late!” she said softly, but lacking none of the urgency, as she glanced at Janie.
“We had a rough night,” Janie told her friend quietly. “I hate to do this to you, Cor. You know if I had any other...”
“Shut your mouth right now,” Corrine said in a fierce whisper. “Before you say something I’ll regret. I’d have this boy, happily, every hour of every day, if it worked out that way. You know that. Is it just the ear infection?”
Because of Dawson’s narrow ear canals, he not only had tubes in his ears, but was prone to infection. Had had his share of them.
And then some.
“Yes,” Janie said, feeling her stomach relax for the first time that morning.
Joe appeared behind his wife. “I had to come out and wish you luck.”
Corrine picked up Dawson’s bag. “His medicine’s in there, right?” she said to Jane, who nodded.
Of course it was. This wasn’t the first time her friend, an attorney, had covered for her. It wasn’t even the tenth or twentieth.
And not just with Dawson. Though Corrine was a prosecutor, not a divorce attorney, she’d still done a lot of advising and behind-the-scenes work in Janie’s dealings with Dillon.
Joe glanced into the backseat, a grin on his face. And then, seeing the sleeping boy, exchanged places with Corrine. With expertise born from a lot of practice, he had Dawson’s restraints unfastened and had the boy on his shoulder without Dawson even so much as emitting a heavy breath.
These days, Corrine’s stockbroker husband was the only one who could get the boy out of his car seat without waking him. Of the three of them, he was the only one strong enough to lift Dawson’s bulky weight easily enough not to disturb him.
He wished her luck again and headed up to the house, where, Janie knew, he’d put the boy to bed in the room they kept for him.
His room, they all called it.
For a split second Janie longed to grab him back and hold on. Because life always felt better with Dawson by her side. Because she was nervous as heck and didn’t want to fail him.
Corrine ran around to Janie’s side of the car, pulling the door open. Janie tried not to hold on too tight when Corrine gave her the hug she’d been needing so badly.
“You’re going to do fine,” she assured her.
“I’m up against master chefs, Cor. With certifications and professional experience.”
“Your recipes are the best.”
“Dawson’s going to need a tutor over the summer if he has any hope at all of being integrated into a mainstream kindergarten class next year.”
She didn’t have any illusions where her son’s abilities were concerned—contrary to what his father thought. Dawson had challenges. But he’d been tested. Many times. He was high-functioning. Which meant that, with the right help, he could possibly grow up to be anything he wanted. Except maybe a professional athlete. Or a father.
“And Joe and I will help with that if it comes down to it...”
Janie shook her head. “I can’t keep taking from you guys. I’m—”
“Shh.” Cor’s finger was soft as it touched Janie’s lips. Reminding her, oddly, of her mother. A woman who’d turned to methamphetamine when her husband left her for another woman and her own job pressure and single motherhood had grown to be too much.
Janie hadn’t heard from her in years. Wasn’t even sure she was still alive.
“We’ll cross the summer’s bridge when we come to it,” Corrine said. “For now, let’s just think about today’s bridge. Today you go from a woman breaking her back to make ends meet to a TV star!”
“I’m not going to be a TV star.”
“That camera’s going to love you!” Corrine said.
“I’m too bony.” She had to go. And needed these few minutes. More than Corrine, her best friend since forever, probably knew.
“Good—you curled your hair,” Corrine was saying as she gave the long blond curls a fluff. “And that color looks good on your eyes. We chose well.”
They’d had a mani-pedi makeover session the day before.
“My clothes have no shape anymore.”
“You’re leggy and thin and there’s no hiding your shape up top. You’re star material.”
Janie laughed. Right. A girl who’d married, at nineteen, a guy she’d known for only six months, because she’d been so certain she’d found what would sustain her happiness for the rest of her life.
She had no formal training. No post–high school education.
And she couldn’t quite swallow the lump in her throat as she looked up at Corrine, who’d never forgotten her, or made her feel less, as she’d gone on to grad school and then passed the bar exam. “I need this so badly,” she said, blinking back tears. “If I win this, the money and prestige combined...added to a commercial packaging of my winning recipe... I could open my own catering business. It’s the answer to all of my prayers.”