Jane Austen Girl - A Timbell Creek Contemporary Romance

by Inglath Cooper

  “Grier McAllister.”

  “So nice to meet you.” She leaned in and lowered her voice to a whisper. “My daughter is auditioning. Poor baby, her daddy is just dead set against it. I’ve been tellin’ him what an exceptional opportunity this is for her. She’s always been a bit of a wallflower, and to tell you the truth, I was more than a little surprised when she agreed to put herself in the running.”

  “Ah, well,” Grier said, not sure what else to say.

  “Any tips you could throw her way?” she asked, sounding hopeful.

  Grier shrugged, forced a smile. “I’m sure everything will be covered tomorrow.”

  Earnest returned from the back with her toasted tomato and Havarti sandwich. She pulled some money from her pocket and paid him, a little uncomfortable under Priscilla Randall’s continuing stare.

  “I own the beauty shop just across the street,” Priscilla said. “Not to be nosy, but there was a rumor circulatin’ there today that your mama is Maxine McAllister. I said a woman who looks like you couldn’t possibly have a mama who. . .” She stopped there, as if suddenly thinking better of the remainder of her comment.

  For a moment, Grier could think of absolutely nothing to say, her mind a complete blank. She had forced herself not to think about her mama on the drive down since she had no intention of seeing her while she was here. A wave of shame rose up inside her for the fact that her mother had chosen men and booze over her.

  On the heels of that old shame, though, came another feeling. An unexpected desire to defend her mother. But as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone again. After all, if Priscilla Randall knew her, any defense Grier had to offer would be so much smoke.

  “My cousin Emma-Ann works out there where your mama’s stayin’. Somebody like you coming in there would sure cheer everybody up.”

  “What place?” Grier asked before she could stop herself.

  “The Sunset Years Retirement Home over on 38.” Priscilla Randall made the pronouncement with careful enunciation, as if Grier’s ability to process the information had suddenly become suspect.

  “Oh,” Grier said, her face flaming with instant mortification.

  Priscilla cocked her head and said, “You didn’t know she was there?”

  “I—of course,” she stammered, hearing the lack of conviction in her own voice.

  “I’m sorry,” Priscilla said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  Picking up her sandwich, Grier turned to leave. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Randall. Wish your daughter luck for me.”

  “I certainly will!” Priscilla called out.

  Grier walked back to the Inn as quickly as she could, her hunger gone, and in its place, an absolute certainty that she never should have come back to Timbell Creek. Eagle be damned. Her decision to do so had been about nothing more than pride and a false sense of being so far beyond what she’d left behind that it could never hurt her again.

  On that, however, she didn’t suppose she could have been more wrong.

  This baby will be special. I’ve always believed that unexpected things usually are. I’ll be a good mother. Who’s to say we have to follow the example we’ve been given? I’ll give my baby what I never had. I’ll do better than my own parents did. I will.

  First entry written in the baby book given to Maxine McAllister for her daughter Grier

  CHAPTER FOUR

  For a long time, Maxine McAllister counted the number of days. Then she counted weeks. Months. And finally, years. Nineteen, now.

  Nineteen since Grier had left Timbell Creek.

  Maxine stared at the newspaper photo, a glamorous headshot with a photographer’s credit in the lower right hand corner. She studied her daughter’s features. Wide green eyes, full lips so like hers, clear, unlined skin that spoke of a care she’d never given her own.

  Grier. What a beautiful woman she’d grown up to be. In a way, Maxine felt as though she were looking at a stranger, even as she saw remnants of the little girl she’d once rocked to sleep at night.

  An ache set up in the center of Maxine’s chest, a painful throb of remorse and regret. She let the newspaper collapse onto her lap, her right hand gripping the arm of her wheelchair in an attempt to steady against the sudden dizziness swamping her like an ocean wave.

  She closed her eyes and fought it back.

  “That must be your young’un.”

  Maxine stayed as she was for a few moments, not answering. When she finally opened her eyes, Hatcher Morris stared at her from the seat of a wheelchair exactly like hers, arthritic hands laced together in his lap, his fingers so gnarled with the disease they were painful to look at. “Yeah,” she said, surprised. “How’d you guess?”

  “McAllister’s not the most common name around,” he said, his voice coarse evidence of the decades of cigarettes to which it had been subjected. “And one of the nurses mentioned she thought you had a girl named Grier.”

  “Had,” Maxine agreed, putting her gaze back on the picture.

  “Don’t you ever see her?”

  “Not for a very long time.”

  “Mind if I ask why?”

  Maxine shook her head, unable to answer. Hatcher Morris was about the only friend she had in this place. On the first day they’d met, he’d read her history in the lines of her face the same as she’d read his in the yellowed whites of his eyes and the distended stomach beneath his faded flannel robe.

  “Well, I don’t expect it’s any of her business, anyway,” Hatcher said.

  “It’s not that,” she finally managed, lifting a hand and waving it once.

  Hatcher reached for the newspaper, looked at the article, and then in his gravelly voice, read, “Image Consultant Comes Home to Find Date for a Duke. Sounds like a big undertaking.”

  “I would imagine,” Maxine said.

  “She’s made it pretty big then, huh?” He lifted an eyebrow, looking impressed.

  “Yes,” she said, pride etching her voice despite the realization that she had absolutely no claim to any credit for it. “She has.”

  He glanced at the paper again. “She resembles you, you know.”

  Maxine forced a smile, unable to see any current resemblance between herself and the beautiful young woman pictured in today’s paper. “You angling for my chocolate pudding again tonight, Hatcher?”

  He chuckled. “Naw. I wouldn’t fool you on something like that. Anybody could see she’s yours.”

  Maxine could have hugged him then and there. Hatch had a good heart. Like her, he’d thrown away some of the best years of his life with nowhere better to go at the end than a place for people who’d made a practice of taking the wrong roads. “Except I’m the rode hard and put up wet version.”

  Hatcher smiled, lines fanning out from his dark eyes. “She comin’ by to see you while she’s in town?”

  Maxine forced herself to laugh so the tears gathering in her throat wouldn’t make their way out as a sob. “I doubt she’ll have much extra time. I guess a TV show would have something of a schedule,” she said, hearing how pitiful her explanation sounded, and at the same time, willing him not to pity her for it.

  Hatcher nodded as if there were nothing to question. “You two ever talk?”

  She could have lied. But she wouldn’t fool him. Hatcher was a sharp man. In fact, she’d begun to think he’d probably done more good as a therapist for some of the people in this place than the doctors who worked here. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “We don’t talk.”

  He was quiet for a couple of minutes, rotating his thumbs back and forth, one over the over. The TV in the far corner of the room blared Jerry Springer reruns. Maxine had grown to hate the show, but Edna Gardner and Mish Caldwell sat glued in front of it every afternoon as if they might find the answers to their own screwed up lives on that twenty-seven inch screen. Somewhere along the way, Maxine had realized the only answers to be found anywhere were the ones that nagged low inside her in that place where she’d tucked the truth away so s
he didn’t have to look at it. Better not to look when there wasn’t a thing you could do to change any of it.

  When Hatcher spoke again, his voice sounded far away, as if he were looking back down the tunnel of his own past and regretting what he saw there. “My kids don’t talk to me neither. ‘Course I don’t blame them. I was nothing but a mean son of a bitch to all three of them.”

  “You?” she said, disbelieving. “Mean?”

  “Nothin’ meaner than a drunk lookin’ for the next drink. Except maybe an out of work drunk. I was both.”

  “I can’t imagine—” she began, then stopped there. Actually, she could imagine. She’d seen the change alcohol could bring over people. For her, it had been little more than a curtain behind which she could hide. A shade to pull when things got too gray.

  “I wonder sometimes,” he said, “what would have happened if somebody had told me what the doctors are saying now. That some people have a gene that’s like a switch being thrown at the first sip. I wonder if I might have left the stuff alone. Never touched it.”

  “Probably not,” she said, uncertain whether that was supposed to make him feel better or worse. She didn’t think it would have stopped her. Self-destruction was a powerful force to resist.

  “’Bout the only thing I ever did for my kids was write them a letter a couple years ago telling them they might have that same gene I have. That one drink might be all it took to put them on the same path as me.” Probably too late, but it made me feel better to know I said it.

  “That must have been a hard thing to do.”

  He lifted a shoulder, glanced off to the side. “Not really,” he said. “I was kind of relieved to know a person might actually have a choice if they never touched the stuff at all.”

  “They listen to you?”

  He rubbed a thumb across his whiskered chin. “My oldest son sent me a letter that basically said I was an arrogant s.o.b. for assuming he’d ever make the same choices I’d made. I never heard from the other two.”

  “I’m sorry, Hatch.”

  “Hey, don’t be. If I were him, I’d hate me, too.”

  Sad, but she couldn’t think of a thing to say to make him feel any better. Not when she could apply the very same sentiment to herself. There were just some roads in this life that could never be retraveled. Some choices that could never be remade. And if she were honest with herself, she’d admit that she didn’t want her daughter to come here. Didn’t want her to see how she’d ended up. Better to leave it all behind that door Grier had closed nineteen years ago. The only thing Maxine had to offer her daughter was an apology. And what good would that do? An apology didn’t change anything. Much as she wished that it could.

  She tucked the newspaper between her leg and the side of the chair, then started rolling toward the door. “I think I’ll go take a little rest, Hatch,” she said.

  “You all right?” he called out after her.

  “Fine,” she said. “I’m just fine.”

  “I’ll come check on you in a bit.”

  “Thanks, Hatch,” she said, without looking back, certain that if she did, the tears she’d been holding in would come spilling out. And once they got started, there was a very good chance they would never stop.

  This is a place of quiet. If you cannot respect this policy, please choose a spot outside the library where your conversation will not be an imposition to those who do respect it.

  Wall plaque above Anderson Randall’s favorite reading spot

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “I should have guessed this is where you’d be hiding.”

  Andy Randall glanced over her shoulder to find Kyle Summers looking down at her with something close to aggravation simmering in his green eyes. She pointed at the sign on the wall and put a finger to her lips.

  “Then let’s go outside,” he said without bothering to whisper. Andy had known Kyle since pre-school, and his lack of concern for rules the rest of the world made an effort to pay attention to was nothing new.

  Today, however, it irked her.

  She frowned at him and tapped the page of the book she’d been reading.

  “Come on. Five minutes,” Kyle said.

  Andy breathed a disgruntled sigh. Second to his disregard for rules was a streak of stubbornness that had allowed him to lead the Timbell Creek Varsity football team to a state championship this past fall, even though they’d started out with a group of guys that easily deserved the mantle of a season-long losing streak.

  She marked her place in the book, then slid her chair back and followed Kyle out of the library to the miniature park just down the street, where a bench sat in the shade of a huge oak tree.

  “So what is it?” Andy asked, doing a poor job of hiding her irritation.

  “You got your period or something?”

  Andy beamed him a look and said, “I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.”

  “So why’d you bag school today?”

  “You actually noticed I wasn’t there?”

  “Of course I noticed.”

  “Of course.”

  He frowned at her sarcasm. “Where were you?”

  “I just didn’t want to go.”

  Kyle arched a dark eyebrow. “This from Miss Harvard Bound?”

  “Did you come all the way over here just to harass me?”

  He leaned down, traced a finger in the dirt beneath the bench. “I was worried about you, Andy. That’s all.”

  For a moment, Andy felt the sting of guilt. The note of uncertainty in Kyle’s voice reminded her of the old Kyle. The one she’d grown up making mud pies with, the one who’d spent the night at her house on weekends until her daddy said they were too old to be sharing a bed together anymore. That Kyle had been happy to spend an entire afternoon swimming in the creek or helping her build one of the doghouses she’d been selling since she was ten, earning them both money for their college savings account.

  But the old Kyle didn’t come around much anymore. The new Kyle had him way too busy with cheerleaders and weightlifting and more cheerleaders.

  She fixed her gaze on the street just beyond the edge of the library and said, “I had an argument with my dad.”

  Kyle leaned back with a look of surprise. “You two?”

  “What’s so weird about that?”

  “Nothing, except that you both think the other one walks on water.”

  “That’s not true,” she said, embarrassed.

  “Yeah, it is. What’s the rift between you?”

  Andy considered not telling him. But by tomorrow, he’d know anyway. It might as well come from her. She reached in her pocket, pulled out the flyer and unfolded it. Kyle took it and began to read. Once he was done, he shook his head and made a noise that fell somewhere between a laugh and a hoot. “You’re kidding, right?” he said.

  She grabbed for the flyer, but tore off the top half, leaving Kyle holding the rest. “What is so ridiculous about me entering this?”

  Kyle started to say something, stopped, then tried again. “A date with a duke? Come on, Andy.”

  She snatched the other part of the flyer from him and took a step back.

  “You’re as bad as he is,” she said. “You don’t think I can win either!”

  “I never said that.”

  “You didn’t have to,” she said, hating the crack in her voice.

  “It just doesn’t seem like something you would do,” he said.

  “More like something one of your cheerleader girlfriends would do?”

  Kyle ran a hand up the back of his hair, letting it pause in mid-air for a moment before falling to his side. The gesture was classic Kyle, and for just a moment, something inside her caved with regret for the changes between them this past year.

  “It sounds like a scam, Andy. Of all people, I can’t imagine you falling for something like that.”

  “It’s not a scam. I checked it out.”

  “Checked it out where?”

  “With the TV net
work that’s sponsoring it.”

  “And they said it’s legit?”

  “Yep.”

  Kyle folded his arms across his chest, causing the muscles of his biceps to flex at the edge of his shirt. Andy felt a dip in her stomach and looked away.

  “Are you mad at me or something?” Kyle asked.

  She pasted on a look of indifference. “We don’t see each other often enough anymore for me to have a reason to be mad at you.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Every time I call you, Andy, you’ve got some excuse about why you can’t go out. Why couldn’t you go to the movies Sunday?”

  She looked down at the ground, scuffed the toe of her running shoe in the dirt. “Too much homework. And besides, wouldn’t Sheila mind you going to the movies with me?’

  “She knows we’re—” He stopped there, didn’t finish.

  “Knows we’re what?” Andy asked abruptly, meeting his gaze head on.

  “Friends.”

  “Friends,” she said, doubt in her voice, suddenly needing to hurt him as much as he had hurt her.

  Kyle stared at her, confusion clouding his eyes. “At least I thought we were.”

  “People change, Kyle. It’s time we both grew up. We’re not little kids anymore.”

  “You wanna tell me exactly what you mean by that?”

  “Maybe we ought to quit trying to hold onto something that doesn’t work anymore. Admit that we’ve outgrown each other.”

  For a moment, something she could almost believe was hurt flashed across his face. He quickly banked it, throwing up a hand and taking a step back. “Hey. If that’s what you want, Andy, you won’t get any argument from me. You used to be somebody I wanted to hang with, but you know what? Now, you’re just a pain in the butt.”

  He wheeled then and jogged off, jumping into the old truck he’d left parked across the street. Andy watched as he popped the clutch and took off, tires squealing.

  For a minute or more, she stood completely still, afraid to think about what she’d just done.