by Hallie Lee
Lenny, who resembled a weary chaperone at a teenage girl’s slumber party, asked, “How’s the investigation going? Luke said he enjoyed spending the day with you.”
“It’s fine.” I really didn’t want to talk about work, so I steered the chitchat in a lighter direction. “He saw Bella at day’s end, so I suspect he enjoyed it more than he’s letting on.”
“I just love her,” Desi said. “Although Micah disapproves.”
“Why?” Robin leaned in. “You’d think she’d love the idea of her big brother dating her best friend.”
Lenny sipped his tea. “That’s probably why she doesn’t approve. She’s afraid she’s going to lose her status with them both.” He glanced at his wife. “You two hens need to stop plotting, and let things play out naturally.”
“Lenny’s right,” I said, recalling the awkward discussion between Luke and Bella today. “I’m not sure they’re even a—thing—yet.”
Both Desi and Robin frowned at me.
The waiter brought a bottle of red wine to the table, and then whisked off the white cloth like a magician, revealing it to Robin with a note of self-satisfaction. As she squinted to read the label, I thought she was as cute as a button with her sassy glasses and chic bob.
After Robin nodded her approval, the waiter put on an extravagant show of uncorking the bottle, sending the ladies into a frenzy of expectation. He poured a teensy amount into Robin’s glass, which struck me as a little chintzy. I was on the verge of calling him out on it when I realized it was all part of the pageantry.
We watched anxiously as Robin swirled the wine, sniffing it, and then finally, sipped. Lenny, Desi, and I leaned in with anticipation. The waiter dude held his breathe.
“It’s exquisite,” Robin pronounced.
A wave of perspiration broke out on my forehead.
I grabbed another piece of bread. Devoured it like a hungry koi. What was the point? Things were going badly.
Lenny glanced my way. “How’s Gertrude, Ricky?”
Desi and Robin whipped their heads in my direction. “Who’s Gertrude?” Desi asked.
“Gertrude is my cat. I call her Gerty.”
“You have a cat?” Robin asked, interested. “What color is she?”
“She’s orange, with white feet. Green eyes.”
“She sounds beautiful,” Robin said. “Do you have a picture?”
I reached for my phone. Found a flattering picture of Gerty in her sun patch. I thought her eyes looked especially fetching. “Here she is.”
Robin took my phone, beaming. “She’s got ears just like Buford.” She retrieved hers from her purse. “He’s black. Remember you saw him at Desi and Lenny’s? He’s a little skittish, but so sweet.”
As Robin introduced me to a digital folder of Buford’s glamour shots, Lenny quipped, “The cat ate a hole clean through my recliner.”
Robin defended Buford’s honor. “He was only trying to hide. He’s not comfortable in Shady Gully yet. And I couldn’t leave my baby at home. I’d worry myself sick.” I admired the delight in her wide eyes, and the easy smile on her lips. Yes, this woman definitely rocked my boat.
“I understand exactly how you feel,” I told her as I swigged the bougie wine with legs, texture, and finish. “Gerty hasn’t been herself today. I don’t know if it’s something she ate or…if she just isn’t happy.”
Soon Robin and I fell into a riveting discussion about Buford and Gerty—and the night was off and running.
Chapter Fifteen
Like A Roll Of Toilet Paper
Wolfheart
T
he sounds of discord kept me in my garden well past dark. While I welcomed the time among my treasured foliage, the antagonism between Meadow and Bella shredded my already ragged heart. As pieces of their quarrel drifted through the opened windows on this breezy night, it saddened me that the past had come to spew its venom on our present.
“Mother, you need to let it go. It’s been years—” The mother was Bella’s jab to the chin.
“Almost twenty-three, to be exact. Trust me, I know.” Meadow’s uppercut.
Although I could only hear their voices, I imagined them circling each other, Bella flashing her blue eyes defiantly against her mother’s green ones.
I directed my gaze toward the light of the full moon, as one of Peony’s beloved strays sprawled on the edge of the garden. The dog marked me with his sorrowful brown eyes, as if the hurtful words pained him as well.
While exiled from the house, I trolled the stems and leaves in my garden, inspecting them for insects threatening the fruit, and pruning around several lifeless blossoms. The sheriff had been impressed with my abundant harvest, but he couldn’t conceive of the amount of watchfulness, and the never-ending fostering it took to maintain.
Like a child, I thought, a garden was to be nurtured and cultivated.
“I’m tired of hiding. Hanging my head. Being ashamed.” The breeze carried Bella’s unsteady voice, thick with tears. “I’m fine with who I am, even if you aren’t.”
“I’m fine with who you are, Bella, and I love who you are.” Meadow sounded weary. “None of this is your fault.”
“It’s not yours either. You should hold your head high.”
“I’ll never be able to do that. I’m defined by what happened.”
And there it was, I thought. The impasse. Young people were so bold, everything clear cut, black and white, while adults held too tightly to the angst of their pasts, clinging to their sorrow like a favorite blanket, instead of casting it away.
As a plaintive howl resonated along the creek, my heart skipped. I scanned the tree line, hoping to catch a glimpse of the broken-hearted beast, but the wolf’s lament was only to be heard tonight. His lyrical cry just a reminder that he was there, and we weren’t alone.
The mosquito screen clacked against the door frame, indicating that either Bella or Meadow had retreated to the front porch. Meadow held a mug of tea, spying the night sky. When she flicked her gaze in my direction, I meandered to the house.
“Thanks.” I took the mug into my hands.
“It’s vanilla and lemon grass.”
I lowered my aching body into a rocking chair I’d broken in like an old friend. “I’d ask who won, but it seems it was a draw. As usual.”
“Doesn’t she realize what it will do to me? I can’t relive it again. All the shame, the talk, the looks—”
“Most of the town already knows. It was a long time ago.”
“Yes, I know, and I don’t want to go back.”
“Would you call what you’re doing now moving forward? Meadow, love, you’ve been at a standstill for years. Maybe holding your head up, like Bella says, would help.”
“I blame Desi’s kid. Luke. He stirred it all up, wanting Bella to talk to him.”
I considered my words carefully. “That’s probably true. But Bella is not one to sit back. She’s passionate. She’s wants to embrace life. To experience what’s beyond the creek. This was inevitable.”
“Why?” she demanded in frustration. “Why won’t everyone just let me be?”
“It’s not just about you anymore.” Although her anguish pained me, I pressed on. “Meadow, do you really want Bella to hide out on the creek her whole life? Is that seriously what you want for her?”
Tears slid silently down her cheek. “Dolly is going to fight ugly. She’ll lie about me. She’ll make it sound like I seduced Mitch.”
“You were fourteen, Meadow. He was the guidance counselor at school. Nothing Dolly says—”
“She’ll lie. You know she lies all the time.”
“I do. But the facts speak for themselves. I honestly think—even though it will open old wounds for you—confronting it…addressing it…after all these years, will liberate you. And maybe even Dolly.”
“What? Who cares about her?”
“Put yourself in her place.”
“No.”
“For a woman obsessed with status and appearances, it must have been humbling to lose it all in such grand fashion. Her reputation. Her husband. Her home. Can you imagine trashing your own dream home because you can’t stand the thought of someone else living in it?”
“You’re talking about Desi’s house?”
I nodded. “As soon as they signed on the dotted line, Dolly neglected the place, disrespected it, and by the time the closing came, and Desi and Lenny finally turned the key, Dolly had diminished it.”
“I don’t feel sorry for her. She could have reached out. She could have—”
“What? Helped you raise the baby?”
“No. Never.” Meadow fidgeted, drumming her fingers along her jeans.
I sighed. “She looked like she’d seen a ghost when she saw Bella at the audition.”
“Yeah well. That’s too bad. Sorry our presence is inconvenient for her.” Meadow added bitterly, “She can’t just banish us because we’re a painful reminder.”
“I agree, and that’s my point. Own your place in Shady Gully, Meadow. And let your daughter do the same.”
“Bella,” she breathed, the word heavy with affection. “She’s been asking if I know where he is, where he ran off to.”
I snorted. “God only knows. I wish I’d found him.”
“It was probably better you hadn’t.”
“What are you implying?” I rocked in my chair while Meadow jiggled her fingers. “I’m sure he’s long gone now.”
“Yep. And even if you had filed charges, it’s too late to do anything now.”
I stretched my gaze in the direction of the creek, keeping my face blank.
After a beat, Meadow asked softly, “Did you hear the wolf crying to the full moon earlier?”
Her poignant question extended our melancholy, and as the silence lengthened, we nursed our memories and grief. Finally, I said, “You remember the water and food we sent home with Fireman the other night?”
“Yes. For his granny?”
“Supposedly.” I sighed. “The sheriff, or the dogs, found it in the woods not far from here.” I didn’t want to alarm her, so I kept my suspicions to myself. “You and Bella be mindful about the gun. Just in case.”
•
I’d held all the cards in the beginning, when Megan, the beautiful darling of wealth and privilege, couldn’t get enough of me. Our pairing, for lack of a better term, developed authentically. I supplied her and her friends with weed, while she provided me with amusement.
Ours was a business arrangement that lifted her status among the popular kids, and lined my pockets with money. My growing bank account motivated me to stay in school, and with only a year left until graduation, Peony’s delight was palpable.
Admittedly, I basked in Megan’s blue-eyed adoration, and welcomed the murmurs of outrage among the suitable, proper folk. Supposedly, Principal Jethro had expressed his concern to her parents, telling them how their angelic daughter was cavorting with the depraved boy from across the creek. Megan and I had laughed about that as we got high one afternoon at Cicada Stadium. And then I’d shown her just how depraved I could be…
When our paths crossed during school, she embraced her part as the fearful innocent, while I refined my reputation as the no-account loser from the across the creek. The difference was it was a role for her, and for me—it was the truth.
Over time, the cards in the game shifted. Megan wanted more and more product, and paid me less and less, if at all. “No problem,” I’d scowl at her, letting her drag me off to the woods, where my supply and demand worries faded with each tantalizing kiss.
The day of reckoning always came though, and I’d find myself scrambling for product, sometimes forced to drive an hour and a half into Belle Maison, where I’d troll the back lanes for whatever she wanted. And pay double for it.
One time when Megan wanted to slip the girls at her hay ride a party gift, I’d found a source in Toulouse who bagged product in tiny little gram bags. I’d been thinking about how I could pick up some colorful stickers at Walmart, and make them look festive, when one of my tires blew and I landed in a ditch along the back roads of Toulouse.
I’d stuffed my baggies into my windbreaker, trekking through the woods in blinding rain. Eventually, the moon led me to the highway, where I hitchhiked a mile before a trucker picked me up. Fortunately, rather than knife me, he dropped me at a gas station where I called Axe.
Axe and Peony were married by this time, and she was pregnant with Meadow. Axe hadn’t been happy leaving his warm bed in his cozy shanty to come to my rescue. He gave me a big lecture on the way back to the creek. Encouraged me to do some soul searching and figure out what I wanted out of life. And then, toward the end of the lecture, he’d grown as stern as I’d ever seen him, and warned me that he wouldn’t have that around when the baby came. We both knew what that was…and I felt properly shamed.
I got Megan her gift baggies though. And made it to Walmart for the stickers with bright colored stars.
And since I didn’t want to disappoint Axe, I got creative and found a new square of land farther along the creek. Many a night, using only the light of the moon and the headlights on my truck for illumination, I tilled row after row after row. Determined to expand my harvest, and to please Megan, my enterprise bloomed.
One fall night, after a particularly naughty parking session in the cab of my truck, I reached over Megan’s head and drew a heart on the foggy window.
Megan sat up, frowning as she pulled on her bra, and buttoned her blouse.
“What’s the matter?” I growled. “You seem off tonight.” I quickly wiped my hand through the heart.
“Nothing.” She ran her fingers through her long blonde hair.
I longed to do that, but it seemed too intimate a gesture for our relationship. “Doesn’t sound like nothing.”
“Have you got anything? I’m kind of wound up.” She slanted her blue-eyed gaze at me beneath her lashes.
“Just what I already gave you.” I forced some gruffness into my tone.
“That’s for after sixth hour tomorrow. I just need a little bump now.”
I shrugged. Implied it was her problem. Cursed myself for not stashing extra in my truck.
“Do you know that guy, Taylor?” she asked. “Big, bulky jock. Number forty, I think.”
I didn’t. “What about him?”
She turned to the window, regarding the smudge. “He told me I was a tease today. In front of Judy and Lola.” When she pivoted back to me, her eyes were full. “And he said the strangest thing. It was stupid. But kind of mean.”
“What did he say?” My blood boiled. “Tell me, Megan.”
“He said that I was like a roll of toilet paper. A little went a long way.” She placed her fingers under her eyes, carefully blotting a smear of mascara. “What does that mean? I think it’s mean. Don’t you?”
•
After school the next day I found number forty. Although he was at least fifty pounds heavier than me, he was out of shape, and slow to react. “Hey Taylor,” I said.
“Heyyyy,” he wheeled. “Creek Freak. How ya—”
I punched him solidly on the chin. As he doubled over in pain, I said, “There’s an old Apache saying that goes like this, it’s better to have less thunder in the mouth and more lightning in the hand.”
As he tried to stand, I threw an upper cut straight to his nose. Blood spewed. “Stay away from Megan.”
News traveled fast at Shady Gully High and I was suspended by the afternoon. Although I’d upset Peony, and disappointed Axe, it had been worth it. Megan smiled easily, fawning over me anew…especially when she took me into the woods each day I was banned from school.
By
then Megan held all the cards, and I never even noticed the transition in the game. Only that my heart flipped at the sight of her, and she was in my thoughts even when we were apart. Even the sound of her name caused a jump in my spirit.
Somewhere along the way, while I’d been entertaining fantasies of a life together, I’d missed the change in her. While I’d softened, she’d become harder. So when she invited me to her big mansion on the hill for a party, I said yes.
•
Madhawk made it to Osprey just before dark.
He slowly studied the houses on the lake, determining which were occupied, and which were what the wealthy called, “summer houses.” Pretty straightforward, especially when it was garbage day at Lake Osprey.
Once the old, retired folks rolled their red garbage cans to the curb at dusk, Madhawk set his sights on a hoity toity house—without a red can. Easy peasy.
When night fell over the lake, Madhawk quietly shuffled to the storage shed in the carport. He found it locked, but the bolt was flimsy, so he used the light of the moon to search for a rock big enough to do the job.
He grunted with satisfaction when he found a cluster of dried concrete crumbling along the driveway. Raising it high over his head, he swung at the deadbolt, thrilled when it gave way, revealing a shed full of goodies.
“Door prizes,” Madhawk chuckled to himself.
Beyond the usual yard equipment, like a tiller and a lawn mower, he found a couple of battery-operated lanterns and a crowbar. “Yesiree. I must be living right.”
He panted as he climbed the two flights of steps to the house.
While his pain had eased thanks to the squirt’s fruitful trip to Wolfheart’s place, he needed good lighting to properly tend to his wounds. And he needed a bath, a soft bed, and a good night’s sleep.
He winced as he pried open a window with the crowbar, and then rejoiced when no alarm rang in his ears. Rich people were so stupid, he thought. You’d think with all their money they’d have better security.
He climbed through the window, quickly shutting all the curtains and blinds in the house. He used the flashlight the squirt had swiped to set out the lanterns he’d found in the shed.