Read Online Destiny by chance: A Contemporary Romance Fiction Novel by Margaret Ferguson - Free Book Online

taught to give up her purse.  However, she had thousands of dollars of cash and gift cards in her purse for a church fundraiser, and somehow couldn’t bear just to let it go.  Grateful, at that point, for the classes, she not only managed to keep her purse but gave the perpetrator a bloodied nose.  Many of those who witnessed the whole occurrence and rushed to her aid, arrived just after she nailed him in the groin, bringing him to his knees.  Some applauded her while the rest sat on the young man until the police arrived. 
    The parking lot was full.  Destiny stepped through the metal door at the back entrance. Tentatively, she walked down the hallway into the bustling hall. The old Senior Center smelled of popcorn and potpourri.  The potpourri was to cover the faint smell of cigarettes—a smell that still clung to the insulation and had become a part of the sheetrock—from decades before they implemented a no smoking policy.  After being an extrovert most of her life, she had become more introverted since burying her son and husband.  So, with every step she took now, she contemplated turning and leaving.  But she knew Lisa would only track her down and drag her back.  Destiny drew in a deep breath for courage and then entered the main hall.
    The bingo caller was rapidly speaking letter and number combinations into a microphone, while men and women sat expectantly in metal chairs around folding tables, poised to stamp in unison once their numbers were confirmed.  Some of them had three cards each, their allotted limit for every game.  They methodically perused each card in rapid succession to try and stay ahead of the bingo caller as well as the other players.  Every fifteen seconds, a new number was called, mostly to assure that they could get in as many games as possible before eight-thirty.
    It wasn’t hard to spot Lisa.  She stood out like a parade float on a city street.  She was sitting beside a man in a wheelchair who was breathing with the assistance of an oxygen tank, helping him fill his card.  Destiny smiled.  Lisa didn’t care how differently she dressed, or how much she looked like she didn’t fit in.  Her heart was in the right place.  These people welcomed her and talked to her as though she was one of them. 
    Destiny and Lisa had been best friends since childhood though their paths through the years had been different.  Lisa became an entrepreneur.  Destiny, by fate, ended up the head of a household at seventeen.  When she wasn’t in school, she was working to help make ends meet.  Her parents weren’t planners like Phillip.  They each had purchased just enough life insurance to pay for their funerals.  Barely.  Destiny and Andy were able to collect Social Security after their parents’ deaths. Her brother wanted to go to college and had to depend on scholarships and student loans until they finally sold their family home.  Destiny, on the other hand, not only had a full scholarship but applied for enough additional ones to cover the cost of her books and dorm expenses.
    Destiny watched Lisa interact with the elderly men on either side of her.  Both of them were in wheelchairs.  In fact, practically a fourth of those around the tables were in wheelchairs, chuckling and nudging each other in jest.  Lisa looked up and spied Destiny.  She waved and rushed to Destiny’s side.  Immediately she grabbed her best friend by the arm and led her to their table.  Lisa stood just behind her friends, waiting for someone, anyone to say “bingo.”  That would give her a fifteen-minute break for introductions.  A moment later one of the men sitting beside Lisa yelled: “‘Bingo!”   Everyone else groaned with disappointment, then immediately stood to either grab something to eat at the concession stand, run outside for a quick smoke, pee, or swap out bingo cards.
    “Dee, I would like you to meet my friends, Harry, and Ralph.”
    Ralph wheeled his chair backward a few