Emma, however, didn’t believe in moping. “Golf resort or not,” she said briskly, “we need to discuss how we’re going to find the money to get our library repaired and back in operation. Even with the insurance check, we’re still miserably short of what we need.”
Kayla refastened her blond topknot. “I can’t stand having another stupid bake sale. Zoey and I did enough of that in junior high.”
“Or a silent auction,” Shelby said.
“Or a car wash or a raffle.” Zoey swatted at a fly.
“We need something big,” Birdie said. “Something that will attract everybody’s attention.”
They talked for another hour, but no one could come up with a single idea about what that might be.
Arlis Hoover pointed a stubby finger toward the bathtub Meg had just scrubbed for the second time. “You call that clean, Miss Movie Star? I don’t call that clean.”
Meg no longer bothered pointing out she wasn’t a movie star. Arlis knew that very well. Exactly why she kept repeating it.
Arlis had dyed black hair and a body like gnawed gristle. She fed off a permanent sense of injustice, certain that only bad luck separated her from wealth, beauty, and opportunity. She listened to wacko radio shows as she worked, shows that proved Hillary Clinton had once eaten the flesh of a newborn child and that PBS was entirely funded by left-wing movie stars bent on giving homosexuals control of the world. Like they’d really want it.
Arlis was so mean that Meg suspected even Birdie was a little afraid of her, although Arlis did her best to curb her more psychotic impulses when she was around her employer. But she saved Birdie money by getting the most out of a tiny housekeeping staff, so Birdie left her alone.
“Dominga, come over here and look at this bathtub. Is that what you folks in Mexico call clean?”
Dominga was an illegal, in no position to disagree with Arlis, and she shook her head. “No. Muy sucia.”
Meg hated Arlis Hoover more than she’d ever hated anyone, with the possible exception of Ted Beaudine.
What are you paying your housekeepers, Birdie? Seven, seven-fifty an hour?
No. Birdie paid them ten-fifty an hour, as Ted surely knew. All of them except Meg.
Her back ached, her knees throbbed, she’d cut her thumb on a broken mirror, and she was hungry. For the past week, she’d been existing on pillow mints and the inn’s leftover breakfast muffins, smuggled to her by Carlos, the maintenance man. But those economies couldn’t make up for her mistake that first night when she’d taken a room in a cheap motel, only to wake up the next morning realizing that even cheap motels cost money, and that the one hundred dollars in her wallet had shrunk to fifty dollars overnight. She’d been sleeping in her car out by the gravel quarry ever since and waiting until Arlis left for the day before sneaking into an unoccupied room to shower.
It was a miserable existence, but she hadn’t yet picked up the phone. She hadn’t tried to reach Dylan again, or called Clay. She hadn’t phoned Georgie, Sasha, or April. Most important, she hadn’t mentioned her situation to her parents when they’d called. She hugged that knowledge to herself every time she unclogged another fetid toilet or dug one more scummy hair plug from a bathtub drain. In a week or so, she’d be out of here. Then what? She had no idea.
With a large family reunion scheduled to arrive soon, Arlis could only spare a few minutes to torture Meg. “Turn that mattress before you change the sheets, Miss Movie Star, and I want all the sliding doors on this floor washed. Don’t let me find one fingerprint.”
“Afraid the FBI will discover it belongs to you?” Meg said sweetly. “What do they want you for anyway?”
Arlis nearly went catatonic whenever Meg talked back to her, and an angry rash exploded on her veiny cheeks. “All I have to do is say one word to Birdie, and you’ll be locked behind bars.”
Maybe, but with the inn filling up for the weekend and a shortage of housekeepers, Arlis couldn’t afford to lose her right now. Still, best not to press it.
When Meg was finally alone, she gazed longingly at the sparkling bathtub. Last night, Arlis had stayed late to check inventory, so Meg hadn’t been able to sneak in a shower, and with the inn booked up, the prospects didn’t look much better for tonight. She reminded herself that she’d spent days on muddy trails without giving a thought to indoor plumbing. But those excursions had been recreational, not her real life, although now that she looked back, it seemed as though recreation had been her real life.
She was struggling to flip the mattress when she sensed someone behind her. She prepared herself for another confrontation with Arlis only to see Ted Beaudine in the doorway.
He leaned against the doorjamb with one shoulder, his ankles crossed, perfectly at home in the kingdom over which he ruled. Sweat glued her mint green polyester maid’s dress to her skin, and she dabbed her forehead against her arm. “My lucky day. A visit from the Chosen One. Cured any lepers lately?”
“Too busy with the loaves and fishes thing.”
He didn’t even smile. Bastard. A couple of times this week as she’d adjusted drapes or wiped off a windowsill with one of the toxic products the inn insisted on using, she’d spotted him outside. City Hall, it turned out, occupied the same building as the police station. This morning, she’d stood in a second-floor window and watched him honest-to-God stop fricking traffic to help an old lady across the street. She’d also noticed a lot of young women entering the building through the side door that led directly to the municipal offices. Maybe on city business. More likely monkey business.
He nodded toward the mattress. “Looks like you could use some help with that?”
She was exhausted, the mattress was heavy, and she swallowed her pride. “Thanks.”
He looked behind him into the hallway. “Nope. Don’t see anybody.”
Letting herself get suckered in gave her the willpower to wedge her shoulder under the bottom corner of the mattress and hoist it. “What do you want?” she grunted.
“Checking up on you. One of my duties as mayor is to make sure our vagrant population isn’t accosting innocent citizens.”
She jammed her shoulder farther under the mattress and retaliated with the rottenest thing she could think of. “Lucy’s been texting me. So far, she hasn’t mentioned you.” Or much of anything, just a sentence or two saying she was all right and she didn’t want to talk. Meg heaved the mattress higher.
“Give her my best,” he said, as casually as if he were referring to a distant cousin.
“You don’t even care where she is, do you?” Meg lifted the mattress another few inches. “Whether she’s all right or not? She could have been kidnapped by terrorists.” Fascinating how easily a basically nice person like herself could turn nasty.
“I’m sure someone would have mentioned it.”
She struggled to catch her breath. “It seems to have escaped your supposedly gigantic brain that I’m not responsible for Lucy ditching you, so why make me your personal punching bag?”
“I have to take out my boundless fury on somebody.” He recrossed his ankles.
“You’re pathetic.” But she’d barely gotten the words out of her mouth when she lost her balance and tumbled over the box spring. The mattress slammed on top of her.
Cool air slithered over the backs of her bare thighs. The skirt of her uniform bunched above her hips, giving him an unrestricted view of her bright yellow panties and possibly the dragon inked on her hip. God had punished her for being rude to his Perfect Creation by turning her into a big Posturepedic sandwich.
She heard his muffled voice. “You all right in there?”
The mattress didn’t move.
She squirmed, trying to work herself free and getting no help. Her skirt crept to her waist. Putting the image of yellow panties and a dragon tattoo out of her head, she vowed not to let him see her defeated by a mattress. Struggling for air, she curled her toes into the carpet and, with one final contortion, pushed the bulky weight onto the floor.
>
Ted gave a low whistle. “Damn, that is one heavy son of a bitch.”
She stood up and shoved her skirt down. “How would you know?”
He let his gaze drift over her legs and smiled. “Educated guess.”
She lunged for the corner of the mattress and somehow managed to gather enough traction to turn the awful thing and pull it back onto the box spring.
“Well done,” he said.
She pushed a spike of hair out of her eyes. “You’re a vindictive, cold-blooded psycho.”
“Harsh.”
“Am I the only person in the world who sees through your St. Ted routine?”
“Just about.”
“Look at you. Not even two weeks ago, Lucy was the love of your life. Now you barely seem to remember her name.” She kicked the mattress forward a few inches.
“Time heals.”
“Eleven days?”
He shrugged and wandered across the room to investigate the Internet connection. She stomped after him. “Stop taking what happened out on me. It wasn’t my fault that Lucy ran off.” Not entirely true, but close enough.
He squatted down to inspect the cable connection. “Things were fine before you got here.”
“You only think they were.”
He reset the jack and rose to his feet. “Here’s the way I see it. For reasons only you know—although I have a fair idea what they are—you brainwashed a wonderful woman into making a mistake she’ll have to live with for the rest of her life.”
“It wasn’t a mistake. Lucy deserves more than you were prepared to give her.”
“You have no idea what I was prepared to give her,” he said as he headed for the door.
“Not your unbridled passion, that’s for sure.”
“Stop pretending you know what you’re talking about.”
She charged after him. “If you’d loved Lucy the way she deserved to be loved, you’d be doing everything in your power to find her and convince her to take you back. And I didn’t have any hidden agenda. All I care about is Lucy’s happiness.”
His steps slowed, and he turned. “We both know that’s not quite true.”
The way he studied her made her feel as though he understood something about her that she didn’t. Her hands fisted at her sides. “You think I was jealous? Is that what you’re saying? That I set out to somehow sabotage her? I have a lot of faults, but I don’t screw over my friends. Ever.”
“Then why did you screw over Lucy?”
His lethal, unfair attack sent an angry rush through her. “Get out.”
He was already leaving, but not before he sent a final dart her way. “Nice dragon.”
By the time her shift was over, all the inn’s rooms were occupied, making it impossible for her to sneak in a shower. Carlos had smuggled her a muffin, her lone meal of the day. Besides Carlos, the only other person who didn’t seem to hate her was Birdie Kittle’s eighteen-year-old daughter, Haley, which was something of a surprise, since she identified herself as Ted’s personal assistant. But Meg soon figured out that meant she merely ran occasional errands for him.
Haley had a summer job at the country club, so Meg didn’t see her much, but she sometimes stopped in a room Meg was cleaning. “I know Lucy’s your friend,” she said one afternoon as she helped Meg tuck in a clean sheet. “And she was super nice to everybody. But she didn’t seem like she’d be happy in Wynette.”
Haley bore little resemblance to her mother. A few inches taller, with a long face and straight, light brown hair, she wore her clothes too small and applied more makeup than her delicate features warranted. Meg gathered from an exchange she’d overheard between Birdie and her daughter that the eighteen-year-old’s entry into skankdom was fairly recent.
“Lucy is pretty adaptable,” Meg said as she slipped on a fresh pillowcase.
“Still, she seemed more like a big-city person to me, and even though Ted travels all over when he does consulting, this is where he lives.”
Meg appreciated knowing someone else in this town had shared her doubts, but it didn’t help shake off her growing despondence. When she left the inn that evening, she was dirty and hungry. She lived in a rusty Buick she parked each night in a deserted patch of scrub by the town gravel quarry where she prayed no one would discover her. Her body felt heavy despite her empty stomach, and as she approached the car that had become her home, her steps slowed. Something didn’t seem right. She looked more closely.
The rear of the car on the driver’s side sagged almost imperceptibly. She had a flat tire.
She stood there without moving, trying to absorb this latest disaster. Her car was all she had left. In the past when she’d had a flat, she’d simply called someone and paid to have it changed, but she had barely twenty dollars left. And even if she could figure out how to change it herself, she didn’t know whether the spare had air. If there was a spare.
With a catch in her throat, she opened the trunk and pulled up the mangy carpet, filthy with oil, dirt, and who knew what else? She found the spare tire, but it was flat. She’d have to drive on the bad tire to the town’s nearest service station and pray she didn’t damage the rim on the way.
The owner knew who she was, just like everybody else in town. He delivered a cutting remark about this only being a hick small-town garage, then launched into a rambling story extolling the way saintly Ted Beaudine had single-handedly saved the county food pantry from closing. When he wound down, he demanded twenty dollars in advance to replace the original tire with the balding spare.
“I’ve got nineteen.”
“Hand it over.”
She emptied her wallet and stomped inside the service station while he changed the tire. The coins that had collected in the bottom of her purse were all she had left. As she stared at the snack dispensers filled with goodies she could no longer afford, Ted Beaudine’s old powder blue Ford pickup pulled to a pump. She’d seen him drive the truck through town, and she remembered Lucy mentioning that he’d modified it with some of his inventions, but it still looked like an old beater to her.
A woman with long brunette hair sat in the passenger seat. As Ted got out, she lifted her arm and pushed her hair away from her face with a gesture as graceful as a ballerina’s. Meg recalled seeing her at the rehearsal dinner, but there had been so many people, and they hadn’t been introduced.
Ted slipped back inside the car as the tank filled. The woman curled her hand around his neck. He tilted his face toward her, and they kissed. Meg watched with disgust. So much for Lucy’s guilt over breaking Ted’s heart.
The truck didn’t seem to take much gas—maybe the hydrogen fuel cell Lucy had mentioned. Ordinarily Meg would have been interested in something like that, but now all she cared about was counting the change in the bottom of her purse. One dollar and six cents.
As she drove away from the service station, she finally accepted the fact she least wanted to face. She’d hit bottom. She was famished, filthy, and the only home she had was nearly out of gas. Of all her friends, Georgie York Shepard was the softest touch. Indefatigable Georgie, who’d been supporting herself since she was a child.
Georgie, it’s me. I’m aimless and undisciplined, and I need you to take care of me because I can’t take care of myself.
An rv chugged past, heading into town. She couldn’t face driving back to the gravel pit and spending another night trying to convince herself this was simply a new travel adventure. Sure, she’d slept in dark, scary places before, but only for a few days and always with a friendly guide nearby and a four-star hotel waiting at the end of the trip. This, on the other hand, was homelessness. One step away from pushing a shopping cart down the street.
She wanted her father. She wanted him to hug her close and tell her everything would be all right. She wanted her mother to stroke her hair and promise that no monsters lurked in the closet. She wanted to curl up in her old bedroom in the house where she’d always felt so restless.
But as much as her pa
rents loved her, they’d never respected her. Neither had Dylan, Clay, or her uncle Michel. And once she hit Georgie up for money, her friend would join the list.
She started to cry. Big, drippy tears of self-disgust for hungry, homeless Meg Koranda, who’d been born with every advantage and still couldn’t make anything of herself. She pulled off the road onto the crumbling parking lot of a shuttered roadhouse. She needed to call Georgie now, before her father remembered he was still paying her phone bill and he cut that off, too.
She ran her thumb over the buttons and tried to figure out how Lucy was managing. Lucy hadn’t gone home, either. What was she doing to get by that Meg hadn’t figured out how to do for herself?
A church bell tolled six o’clock, reminding her of the church Ted had given Lucy as a wedding present. A pickup rattled by with a dog in the back, and the phone slipped from Meg’s fingers. Lucy’s church! Sitting empty.
She remembered passing the country club when they’d driven there because Lucy had pointed it out. She recalled lots of twists and turns, but Wynette had so many back roads. Which ones had Lucy taken?
Two hours later, just as Meg was about to give up, she found what she was looking for.
Chapter Six
The old wooden church sat on a rise at the end of a gravel lane. Meg’s headlights picked out the squat white steeple just above the central doors. In the dark, she couldn’t see the overgrown graveyard off to the right, but she remembered it was there. She also remembered Lucy retrieving a hidden key from somewhere near the base of the steps. She shone her headlights on the front of the building and began fumbling around among the stones and shrubbery. The gravel ground into her knees, and she scraped her knuckles, but she couldn’t find any evidence of a key. Breaking a window seemed sacrilegious, but she had to get in.
The glare of the headlights sent her shadow shooting grotesquely up the simple wooden facade. As she turned back to her car, she spotted a roughly carved stone frog perched underneath a shrub. She picked it up and found the key beneath. Tucking it deep in her pocket for safekeeping, she parked the Rustmobile, retrieved her suitcase, and climbed the five wooden steps.