The Sugar Queen

  But then something on an elemental level stopped her. She felt a connection to Della Lee at that moment, one she couldn’t explain. She felt her here, felt her genuine, profound unhappiness, like it was her own. It felt so familiar, that belief that nothing was ever going to change so why try anymore.

  Okay, so maybe letting Della Lee know that she knew might help. It might keep Della Lee from coming back to this…this violence.

  She turned her head slightly, and she could see down a short hallway.

  She took a few more slow steps backward, keeping her eyes on the man’s face, watching for movement. She then turned and walked on the balls of her feet down the hallway, bypassing small piles of his dirty clothes. There were crooked photos on the wall of Della Lee as a child, with dark hair and eyes. Josey wondered when she started dyeing her hair blond. In one photo she was standing on top of a jungle gym. In another she was diving into the public pool from the high dive. She looked like she was daring the world to hurt her.

  Della Lee’s bedroom at the end of the hall looked like something out of Josey’s teenage dreams. Back then Josey had politely asked her mother if she could hang a poster or two, if she could have some colorful curtains or a bedspread with hearts on it. Her mother had responded with disappointment. Why would Josey ask for something else, as if what she had wasn’t good enough? The heavy oak bed, the antique desk and the sueded chaise in Josey’s room were all Very Nice Things. Josey obviously did not appreciate Very Nice Things.

  The walls in Della Lee’s room were painted purple and there were sheer lavender curtains on the single window. A poster of a white Himalayan cat was taped on one wall, along with some pages torn out of fashion magazines. There was a white mirrored dresser that had makeup tubes and bottles littered across the surface. Some tote bags with names of cosmetic companies, like department store gifts with purchase, were stashed in the corner near the dresser.

  Josey grabbed a few bags and slowly slid open the drawers until she found socks and panties and bras. She stuffed one bag full, then she put the makeup in another bag.

  Her heart beating thickly, she went to the closet and took clothes off the hangers as quietly as possible. She knelt to get a few pairs of shoes. There were two very different sets of shoes: grease-and food-stained sneakers that she obviously wore to work, and leather boots and strappy heels she probably wore out at night. Josey took two from each category. She was just about to stand when she noticed the cardboard box in the corner of the closet. It had sweaters stacked on top of it and PRIVATE written on the side in green marker.

  She crawled to the box and slid the sweaters off. Inside the box were dozens of old spiral notebooks, bundles of letters and photographs. And a couple of old pieces of jewelry, sentimental but not expensive, were wrapped in yellowy tissue paper. There was a yearbook from Bald Slope High with Della Lee’s name embossed on it. Her birth certificate was folded inside.

  She suddenly heard some movement coming from the living room. She turned her head, brushing a coat that was hanging above her. One shoulder of the coat slipped off the hanger and it swayed precariously, a breath away from falling off altogether. She heard the man sigh and then the squeak of the springs on the old couch.

  He was coming down the hall.

  Her body felt tight, and her ears actually felt like they turned as she strained to hear what he was doing. It took a moment to realize that he was using the bathroom, which shared a wall with the closet.

  The wire hanger was still swinging above her, squeaking slightly. If the coat slipped off, the hanger would hit the wall and he would hear. She watched it desperately, saying all sorts of prayers.

  The commode flushed and he shuffled out into the hall. His steps were slow, sleepy.

  The squeak of the couch springs again.

  Silence.

  Josey waited until her muscles were quivering with tension from keeping the same awkward position for so long, then she scooted out of the closet with the box. She stood stiffly and grabbed the tote bags. She went to the bedroom doorway and peered out before slowly walking down the hallway. She stopped just before the turn into the living room.

  She could hear him breathing.

  But was his breath shallow enough to indicate he was asleep again?

  She screwed up her courage and took that final step into the living room.

  Then she almost dropped everything she was carrying.

  He was sitting up on the couch.

  But then she saw that his head was resting back against the cushions. He’d fallen asleep sitting up. There was a cigarette almost burned down to the filter in an ashtray on the coffee table in front of him. Next to the ashtray there was a scuffed leather pocketbook with a shiny purple wallet sticking out of it with the initial D on it in white.

  Della Lee would need her ID.

  Josey was trembling as she took those few steps to the pocketbook. She had to lean down, box and tote bags and all, to get the wallet and slide it out.

  Josey then backed quietly to the door, pushing open the screen with her butt, her eyes not leaving him until the last possible moment when she had to turn.

  She tried to catch the screen door with her elbow so it wouldn’t slap shut, but she was too late. It hit the casing with a bang.

  She took off down the steps. It had been so hot inside the house that running in the chilly air outside felt like falling into water. The damp hair at the base of her neck instantly turned cold and gave her goosebumps. She stopped on the sidewalk and dropped Della Lee’s things by the car. She fished her keys out of her coat pocket and electronically opened the trunk with the device on her key chain, at exactly the same time the screen door to the bungalow slapped shut again and the beautiful long-haired man walked out onto the porch.

  “Hello? What are you doing?” the man called out to her. His voice was melodic, and the air carried it to her like a present. She actually stopped for a moment and turned to him. Seduction was his sixth sense, and he knew he’d caught her.

  “You,” the man said, smiling with an edge as he walked down the steps toward her. With a beautiful swing of his head, he tossed his long dark hair over his shoulder. “Were you just in my house?”

  She heard the caw of a crow nearby, a portent of danger, and she gave a start. Snapping out of his spell, she quickly threw the things into the trunk, then slammed the lid closed.

  Josey hurried to the driver’s side and got in. As she drove away in the largest, goldest Cadillac in the entire Southeast, the man stood on the sidewalk and watched.

  He was still there, his stare as dark as a gypsy curse, as she made the turn at the stop sign and sped off.

  After getting her mother settled in bed that night, the lotion that smelled like lemon tarts rubbed on her small, pretty feet, her sleeping pill and water beside her on the nightstand, Josey crept down the stairs and outside to the car. She was barefooted and her toes curled against the frosty pavement of the driveway, but it was quieter this way.

  Regardless, Helena stuck her head out of her bedroom doorway when Josey came back in with Della Lee’s things.

  “It’s okay, Helena. Go back to bed.”

  She ducked her head back in.

  Josey took the things up to her room, then she opened her closet door and set the box and bags in front of Della Lee.

  “What is this?” Della Lee asked, surprised. She set aside one of Josey’s well-thumbed travel magazines. She had washed her face since Josey had last seen her earlier that day, so the mascara streaks were gone. How she’d managed to do that without anyone noticing was a mystery. There weren’t any washcloths smeared with makeup left behind, no sounds of water running hollowly through the pipes from upstairs while Josey and her mother and Helena sat in the sitting room downstairs and watched television.

  Josey smiled. She’d barely been able to contain herself all day, waiting for her mother to finally go to bed. “A surprise! I went to your house today.”

  “You did what?”

&nb
sp; Josey went to her knees and opened one of the bags. “Look. I picked up some of your things. Here are some clothes and makeup and here’s your wallet. And this box. It looked like the kind of thing you wouldn’t want to leave behind.”

  Della Lee was shaking her head, slowly at first, then more and more quickly. “I wanted you to get me a sandwich, not go to my house!”

  “I did this so you wouldn’t have to go back. Say thank you, you closet thief.”

  “Of course I’m not going back there!” she said. She scooted away from the things, farther into the shadows of the closet. “Josey, get rid of this stuff. Now! People can’t know you have this.”

  “Shh! My mother will hear you,” Josey said. “And I don’t have it. It’s yours. No one knows.”

  Della Lee’s eyes went from Josey, to the box and bags, then back to Josey. “Was Julian still there?”

  “The man with long hair? He was asleep on the couch with his hand halfway down his pants. Does he sleep like that all the time? If he had a nightmare, I bet he could really hurt himself.”

  “But you saw him,” Della Lee said, seeing past Josey’s too-casual assessment of him.

  “I saw him.”

  “Then you understand.”

  Josey swallowed. “Yes.”

  “Bastard. I hate that he’s still in my house. That was my mother’s house. I wonder what’s going to happen to it.”

  “Well,” Josey said, “if you’re really leaving, you can sell it.”

  Della Lee smiled, like there was a secret joke in there somewhere. “Sell it. Yes. That’s what I’ll do.”

  “I can help you.”

  Della Lee’s smile faded. “You have to promise me not to do anything else like this, Josey. Don’t go back there to him. Don’t contact realtors. And don’t tell anyone about me. Promise!”

  “Okay, okay. I promise.”

  “I can’t believe you would do this for me.” Della Lee reached out tentatively to touch the box, like she wasn’t sure it was real. When her fingers touched the cardboard, she gave a surprised laugh.

  “When you go up north, you’re going to need your things.”

  Della scooted the box toward her. It made a loud scraping noise against the hardwood floor. “Oh, I get it,” she said as she lifted the lid. “You’re trying to get rid of me because I know about your sweets.”

  “Well, there is that,” Josey said.

  “Josey!” she heard her mother call from down the hall. Josey swung her head around.

  “No one’s ever done anything like this for me. You know, maybe I can keep this stuff.” Della Lee suddenly grabbed the bags and brought them toward her, hugging them. “My stuff,” she said, laughing. “My stuff, my stuff, my stuff. I never thought I’d see it again. Could I have a little privacy here?”

  Josey hesitated at first, then got to her feet.

  “Close the door, will you? And don’t forget to go see Chloe at the courthouse and get my sandwich,” Della Lee said as she brought a shirt out of one of the bags and put it to her face, inhaling. She frowned, then smelled the shirt again. “That’s strange. This doesn’t smell like I remembered.”

  When Josey closed the door, Della Lee was taking out another shirt.

  Josey shook her head, thinking, if Della Lee were a candy, she would be a SweeTart. Not the hard kind that broke your teeth, the chewy kind, the kind you had to work on and mull over, your eyes watering and your lips turning up into a smile you didn’t want to give.

  “Josey!” Margaret called again.

  Josey turned quickly and went to check on her mother.

  Margaret liked to look at one particular photo after she took her sleeping pill, because sometimes it made her dream of him. She was thirty-one in the photo, but she looked much younger. She always had, until recently. When she looked in the mirror these days, she saw someone she didn’t recognize. She didn’t see the beautiful woman in the photo. She saw an old woman trying to be beautiful, her skin dry and her wrinkles like cracks. She looked like a very well-dressed winter apple.

  Long ago, when she was a young woman, younger even than in the photo, she thought she would be happier here in Bald Slope than she was in Asheville. It meant she would be away from her family and their demands of her. She was only twenty-three when she married Marco, a match made by her father. Marco was almost twenty-four years her senior, but he was rich and charismatic and he had no interest in having children, so it could have been much, much worse. She got what she wanted, a life away from her family and no younger siblings to look after anymore, while her family got what they wanted, money. But Margaret didn’t realize how lonely she would be in this strange cool place with the Gothic arches of its downtown buildings and an entire culture devoted to bringing visitors to their town in order to survive. And it didn’t take long to understand that Marco only wanted a beautiful wife and the cachet of her old Southern family name. He didn’t want her. But when she was thirty-one, for one brief wonderful year, she wasn’t lonely. She was happy, for the first and only time she could ever remember.

  The photo had been taken at a picnic social, and he wasn’t supposed to be in the picture. He was caught by accident so close to her. She’d cut the photo in half years ago, when she thought cutting him out of her life was the right thing to do. But she could still see his hand in the photo, a young man’s hand, just barely touching hers. The hand wasn’t her husband’s.

  She could hear Josey moving around in her room. Josey was talking to herself, which was a new development, one Margaret wondered if she should be concerned about. Today Josey had taken entirely too long to fetch the peppermint oil, especially considering Nova Berry didn’t even have it ready yet. Josey had been doing something else. The thought of Josey making a wider circle, one outside this house, made Margaret feel uneasy. Margaret had given up everything for this life, for this house, for this money. Josey would too.

  She heard some scuffling, like something being dragged across the floor in Josey’s room.

  “Josey!” she called, putting the photo under her pillow.

  A minute passed with no response.

  “Josey!” she called again.

  Soon Josey tapped on Margaret’s bedroom door and entered. Margaret knew she wasn’t a good mother. But somehow, all the horrible things Josey did when she was young, all the treasures she broke, all the tantrums she threw, all the scratches and bruises she gave, would have been a little easier to forgive if she just didn’t look so much like Marco. Marco, who would swoop in once a week to take Josey on a drive because Margaret forced him to. Where was he the rest of the time, when Josey was screaming or breaking the good china? The first nine years of Josey’s life, Margaret could only stare at her daughter, at what an unattractive, spoiled child she was, and wonder if she was punishment. She’d had Josey out of desperation and spite. So maybe Margaret got what she deserved. But Marco could do what he wanted, married or not, and he had no consequences to face. Men were thieves.

  “Is something wrong, Mother? Do you need something?”

  “What are you doing in your room? I heard a scraping sound.”

  “I was sitting at my desk,” Josey said. “I pulled back the chair. I’ll go to bed now. I won’t make any more noise.”

  “All right,” Margaret said. Josey started to turn. “Josey?”

  “Yes, Mother?”

  “Did you get rid of that sweater like I asked?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be mean the other day. It just doesn’t look good on you.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Josey said.

  The truth was, that sweater, that color, looked good on her daughter. And every time she wore it, it hinted at something that scared Margaret.

  Josey was growing into her beauty.

  Margaret watched Josey leave.

  She used to be a beautiful woman, the most beautiful woman around.

  She brought out the photo again.

  But that was forever ago.

&nb
sp; 3

  Rock Candy

  Across town, early the next morning, Chloe Finley stared at the door of her apartment.

  Her boyfriend Jake was on the other side of the door, outside in the hall.

  She couldn’t believe this was happening. She’d just kicked Jake out after he’d admitted he’d cheated on her.

  Dazed, she turned around…and tripped over a book on the floor.

  She looked down at it and sighed. She’d half expected this. Whether she liked it or not, books always appeared when she needed them. She’d stopped reading as much once she met Jake. And over the past five years, ever since moving in with him, books had come to her less and less frequently. When they did show up, she ignored them. After all, how did you explain such a thing? Books appearing all of a sudden? She was always afraid Jake would think she was crazy.

  She could remember very clearly the first time it happened to her. Being an only child raised by her great-grandparents on a farm miles from town, she was bored a lot. When she ran out of books to read, it only got worse. She was walking by the creek along the wood line at the end of the property one day when she was twelve, feeling mopey and frustrated, when she saw a book propped up against a willow tree.

  She walked over and picked it up. It was so new the spine creaked and popped when she opened it. It was a book on card tricks, full of fun things she could do with the deck of cards her great-grandmother kept in a drawer in the kitchen for her weekly canasta game.

  She called out, asking if anyone was there. No one answered. She didn’t see any harm in looking through the book, so she sat under the tree by the creek and read as much as she could before it got dark. She wanted to take it with her when her great-grandmother called her home, but she knew she couldn’t. The owner of the book would surely want it back. So she reluctantly left it by the tree and ran home, trying to commit to memory everything she’d read.

  After dinner, Chloe took the deck of cards out of the kitchen drawer and went to her bedroom to try some of the tricks. She tried for a while, but she couldn’t get them right without following the pictures in the book. She sighed and gathered the cards she’d spread out on the floor. She stood, and that’s when she saw the book, the same book she’d left by the creek, on her nightstand.