Skipping a Beat Read online

  “A provocative, poignant look at marriage, money and the things that matter most.”—Beth Kendrick, author of The Pre-nup

  JULIA DUNHILL, A THIRTYSOMETHING PARTY PLANNER, seems to have it all: Married to her high school sweetheart and living in a gorgeous home in Washington, D.C., she imagines her future unfolding very much as it has for the past few years, since she and her husband, Michael, successfully launched their companies. There will be dinner parties to attend, operas to dress up for, and weddings and benefits to organize for her growing list of clients. There will be shopping sprees with her best friend, Isabelle, and inevitably those last five pounds to shed. In her darker moments, she worries that her marriage has dissolved from a true partnership into a façade, but she convinces herself it’s due to the intensity of their careers and fast-paced lifestyle.

  So as she arranges the molten chocolate cupcakes for the annual opera benefit, how can she know that her carefully constructed world is about to fall apart? That her husband will stand up from the head of the table in his company’s boardroom, open his mouth to speak, and crash to the carpeted floor … all in the amount of time it will take her to walk across a ballroom floor just a few miles away. Four minutes and eight seconds after his cardiac arrest, a portable defibrillator jump-starts Michael’s heart. But in those lost minutes he becomes a different man, with an altered perspective on the rarefied life they’ve been living and a determination to regain the true intimacy they once shared. Now it is up to Julia to decide: Is it worth upending her comfortable world to try to find her way back to the husband she once adored, or should she walk away from this new Michael, who truthfully became a stranger to her long before his change of heart?

  Also by Sarah Pekkanen

  The Opposite of Me

  WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Sarah Pekkanen

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Washington Square Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Washington Square Press trade paperback edition February 2011

  WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Designed by Jill Putorti

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Pekkanen, Sarah.

  Skipping a beat : a novel / Sarah Pekkanen.—1st Washington Square Press trade pbk. ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Spouses—Fiction. 2. Successful people—Fiction. 3. Life change events—Fiction. 4. Downward mobility (Social sciences)—Fiction. 5. Marital conflict—Fiction. 6. Quality of life—Fiction. 7. Washington (D.C.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3616.E358S55 2011

  813’.6—dc22 2010026714

  ISBN 978-1-4516-0982-0

  ISBN 978-1-4516-0983-7 (ebook)

  For my wonderful parents,

  John and Lynn Pekkanen

  * * *

  Part One

  * * *

  * * *

  One

  * * *

  WHEN MY HUSBAND, MICHAEL, died for the first time, I was walking across a freshly waxed marble floor in three-inch Stuart Weitzman heels, balancing a tray of cupcakes in my shaking hands.

  Shaking because I’d overdosed on sugar—someone had to heroically step up and taste-test the cupcakes, after all—and not because I was worried about slipping and dropping the tray, even though these weren’t your run-of-the-mill Betty Crockers. These were molten chocolate and cayenne-pepper masterpieces, and each one was topped with a name scripted in edible gold leaf.

  Decadent cupcakes as place cards for the round tables encircling the ballroom—it was the kind of touch that kept me in brisk business as a party planner. Tonight, we’d raise half a million for the Washington, D.C., Opera Company. Maybe more, if the waiters kept topping off those wine and champagne glasses like I’d instructed them.

  “Julia!”

  I carefully set down the tray, then spun around to see the fretful face of the assistant florist who’d called my name.

  “The caterer wants to lower our centerpieces,” he wailed, agony practically oozing from his pores. I didn’t blame him. His boss, the head florist—a gruff little woman with more than a hint of a mustache—secretly scared me, too.

  “No one touches the flowers,” I said, trying to sound as tough as Clint Eastwood would, should he ever become ensconced in a brawl over the proper length of calla lilies.

  My cell phone rang and I reached for it, absently glancing at the caller ID. It was my husband, Michael. He’d texted me earlier to announce he was going on a business trip and would miss the birthday dinner my best friend was throwing for me later in the month. If Michael had a long-term mistress, it might be easier to compete, but his company gyrated and beckoned in his mind more enticingly than any strategically oiled Victoria’s Secret model. I’d long ago resigned myself to the fact that work had replaced me as Michael’s true love. I ignored the call and dropped the phone back into my pocket.

  Later, of course, I’d realize it wasn’t Michael phoning but his personal assistant, Kate. By then, my husband had stood up from the head of the table in his company’s boardroom, opened his mouth to speak, and crashed to the carpeted floor. All in the same amount of time it took me to walk across a ballroom floor just a few miles away.

  The assistant florist raced off and was instantly replaced by a white-haired, grandfatherly looking security guard from the Little Jewelry Box.

  “Miss?” he said politely.

  I silently thanked my oxygen facials and caramel highlights for his decision not to call me ma’am. I was about to turn thirty-five, which meant I wouldn’t be able to hide from the liver-spotted hands of ma’am-dom forever, but I’d valiantly dodge their bony grasp for as long as possible.

  “Where would you like these?” the guard asked, indicating the dozen or so rectangular boxes he was carrying on a tray draped in black velvet. The boxes were wrapped in a shade of silver that exactly matched the gun nestled against his ample hip.

  “On the display table just inside the front door, please,” I instructed him. “People need to see them as soon as they walk in.” People would bid tens of thousands of dollars to win a surprise bauble, if only to show everyone else that they could. The guard was probably a retired policeman, trying to earn money to supplement his pension, and I knew he’d been ordered to keep those boxes in his sight all night long.

  “Can I get you anything? Maybe some coffee?” I offered.

  “Better not,” he said with a wry smile. The poor guy probably wasn’t drinking anything because the jewelry store wouldn’t even let him take a bathroom break. I made a mental note to pack up a few dinners for him to bring home.

  My BlackBerry vibrated just as I began placing the cupcakes around the head table and mentally debating the sticky problem of the video game guru who looked and acted like a thirteen-year-old overdue for his next dose of Ritalin. I’d sandwich him between a female U.S.
senator and a co-owner of the Washington Blazes professional basketball team, I decided. They were both tall; they could talk over the techie’s head.

  At that moment, a dozen executives were leaping up from their leather chairs to cluster around Michael’s limp body. They were all shouting at each other to call 911—this crowd was used to giving orders, not taking them—and demanding that someone perform CPR.

  As I stood in the middle of the ballroom, smoothing out a crease on a white linen napkin and inhaling the sweet scent of lilies, the worst news I could possibly imagine was being delivered by a baby-faced representative from the D.C. Opera Company.

  “Melanie has a sore throat,” he announced somberly.

  I sank into a chair with a sigh and wiggled my tired feet out of my shoes. Perfect. Melanie was the star soprano who was scheduled to sing a selection from Orfeo ed Euridice tonight. If those overflowing wineglasses didn’t get checkbooks whipped out of pockets, Melanie’s soaring, lyrical voice definitely would. I desperately needed Melanie tonight.

  “Where is she?” I demanded.

  “In a room at the Mayflower Hotel,” the opera rep said.

  “Oh, crap! Who booked her a room?”

  “Um … me,” he said. “Is that a prob—”

  “Get her a suite,” I interrupted. “The biggest one they have.”

  “Why?” he asked, his snub nose wrinkling in confusion. “How will that help her get better?”

  “What was your name again?” I asked. “Patrick Riley.”

  Figures; put a four-leaf clover in his lapel and he could’ve been the poster boy for Welcome to Ireland!

  “And Patrick, how long have you been working for the opera company?” I asked gently.

  “Three weeks,” he admitted.

  “Just trust me on this.” Melanie required drama the way the rest of us needed water. If I hydrated her with a big scene now, Melanie might miraculously rally and forgo a big scene tonight.

  “Send over a warm-mist humidifier,” I continued as Patrick whipped out a notebook and scribbled away, diligent as a cub reporter chasing his big break. “No, two! Get her lozenges, chamomile tea with honey, whatever you can think of. Buy out CVS. If Melanie wants a lymphatic massage, have the hotel concierge arrange it immediately. Here—” I pulled out my BlackBerry and scrolled down to the name of my private doctor.

  “Call Dr. Rushman. If he can’t make it over there, have him send someone who can.”

  Dr. Rushman would make it, I was sure. He’d drop whatever he was doing if he knew I needed him. He was the personal physician for the Washington Blazes basketball team.

  My husband, Michael, was another one of the team’s co-owners.

  “Got it,” Patrick said. He glanced down at my feet, turned bright red, and scampered away. Must’ve been my toe cleavage; it tends to have that effect on men.

  I finished placing the final cupcake before checking my messages. By the time I read the frantic e-mails from Kate, who was trying to find out if Michael had any recently diagnosed illnesses like epilepsy or diabetes that we’d been keeping secret, it was already over.

  While Armani-clad executives clustered around my husband, Bob the mail-room guy took one look at the scene and sped down the hallway, white envelopes scattering like confetti behind him. He sprinted to the receptionist’s desk and found the portable defibrillator my husband’s company had purchased just six months earlier. Then he raced back, ripped open Michael’s shirt, put his ear to Michael’s chest to confirm that my husband’s heart had stopped beating, and applied the sticky patches to Michael’s chest. “Analyzing …,” said the machine’s electronic voice. “Shock advisable.”

  The Italian opera Orfeo ed Euridice is a love story. In it, Euridice dies and her grieving husband travels to the Underworld to try to bring her back to life. Melanie the soprano was scheduled to sing the heartbreaking aria that comes as Euridice is suspended between the twin worlds of Death and Life.

  Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised me that Euridice’s aria was playing in my head as Bob the mail-room guy bent over my husband’s body, shocking Michael’s heart until it finally began beating again. Because sometimes, it seems to me as if all of the big moments in my life can be traced back to the gorgeous, timeworn stories of opera.

  Four minutes and eight seconds. That’s how long my husband, Michael Dunhill, was dead.

  Four minutes and eight seconds. That’s how long it took for my husband to become a complete stranger to me.

  * * *

  Two

  * * *

  MICHAEL AND I PROBABLY wouldn’t ever have fallen in love if it hadn’t been for a violent man who’d just been released from prison, a little girl in a wheelchair, and the fact that Michael was constantly—almost savagely—hungry.

  As a teenager, Michael could wolf down a gallon of ice cream like a pre-dinner hors d’oeuvre, and his slim-cut Lee jeans still bagged around his waist. I know a lot of women in D.C. who’d trade their summer homes for a chance to revel in that spectacular metabolism.

  I’d always known who Michael was, of course. In the small town in West Virginia where we both grew up, it was impossible for anyone to be a stranger. By the way, my husband and I aren’t first cousins, and we’ve both got full sets of teeth. I’ve heard all the West Virginia jokes by now, but I still toss back my head and laugh harder than anyone else at them. If I don’t, people think I’m grumpy and a hick, even if I’m draped from head to toe in Chanel and I’ve just had my eyebrows professionally shaped. Which I now do, every three weeks, even though I can’t believe I’m spending as much to bully a few hairs into submission as my mother used to for an entire year’s worth of perms and trims at Brenda’s Cut and Curl.

  We were Mike and Julie back then—by now we’ve upgraded our names along with everything else about us—and although our paths crossed almost daily, we never really spoke until that spring afternoon. I was sixteen years old, and I was walking along the railroad tracks to my after-school job as a babysitter for sweet Becky Hendrickson, who’d been paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident a few years earlier. It was warm and sunny, the kind of afternoon that arrives like a surprise gift after winter’s dark shadows and icy toes. I walked quickly, swinging a plastic bag in my right hand, hoping the two half gallons of strawberry and chocolate wouldn’t melt before I reached Becky. That eleven-year-old kid liked ice cream more than anyone I’d ever met.

  “What’s the rush, sweetheart?”

  The man seemed to materialize from out of nowhere, like a ghost. One minute I was looking down at the parallel wooden tracks stretching in front of me; the next, I was staring at a pair of scuffed yellow work boots planted in my path. I raised my eyes to see the man’s face.

  I was wrong; there was a stranger in my little town, after all.

  He appeared to be in his early twenties. His long-sleeved shirt was hiked up to reveal strong-looking biceps, and his blond hair was cut so short I could see the white of his scalp shining through. Some girls might’ve found him good-looking, might’ve even mistaken the coldness in his face for strength, if they’d met him in the safety of a crowded party or bar.

  “School out already?” the man asked, slinging his thumb through a belt loop on his jeans.

  “Um-hmm.” I nodded, but I didn’t move. Instinctively, I knew that if I tried to go around him, he’d strike as quickly as a snake.

  “Seems a little early for school to get out,” he said, winking. “Sure you’re not cutting class?”

  Our voices were having one conversation; our eyes and bodies, entirely another. Adrenaline rushed my veins while I considered and discarded plans: Don’t run; he’ll catch you. Don’t scream; he’ll attack. Don’t fight; you can’t win. Something about the way his eyes appraised me told me he knew what I was thinking. And he was enjoying watching my escape options dwindle.

  “I’m not cutting,” I said. My senses snapped into high gear. A few feet away, a small animal rustled through the bushes and tall grass
that lined the tracks. The plastic bag in my hand slowly stopped swinging, like a pendulum winding down. I fought the urge to look around to see if anyone was coming; I couldn’t turn my back on this man for an instant.

  “See, back when I went to Wilson, I could’ve sworn we got out at two-thirty,” the man said. He slid his thumb out of his belt loop and moved a step closer to me. It took everything I had not to match his movement with a step back.

  “It’s almost three now,” I said, forcing the words out through my throat, which had gone tight and dry. That scar on the man’s right temple, combined with something about his voice—which was oddly high-pitched—suddenly revealed his identity. Jerry Knowles, the older brother of my classmate John, who had the same cartoon-character voice. Jerry had spent the last four years in state prison for stealing a car and fighting with the police officers who arrested him. It took a nightstick to the temple to finally subdue Jerry, who was getting the best of the two cops. At least that’s what the kids in school always said.

  “So you’re not skipping school,” he said, his voice teasing. Another step closer. “I didn’t think you looked like a bad girl.”

  “I—I need to go to work,” I said. My heart pounded so hard it felt like it would explode through the front of my chest.

  Another slow, deliberate step.

  He was so close now; I could see his scar was starfish-shaped and slightly raised, like he hadn’t gotten stitches to pull the broken skin together into a straight line.

  “They’re waiting for me,” I whispered desperately. “They’ll come looking for me.”

  That’s when he took one last step. He reached out a finger to stroke my cheek. I couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, couldn’t even breathe. His finger felt hot and rough against my skin. It moved lower, to trace my collarbone.