by Julia London
When Ella had asked about the extensions, Byron looked at her with an expression that conveyed she’d failed him on every level, in every possible way. “I think you ought to reconsider your question,” he’d said gravely.
Ella had reconsidered it and had slunk back to her desk.
“Don’t tell me Brian is raining on my parade,” Stacy complained when Ella reported back to her. “What does he know, anyway?”
“His name is Byron and he’s a CPA,” Ella had said firmly. “They look good,” she admitted to Stacy now. “Very Carrie Underwood-ish. Where did you get them, again?”
Stacy sighed and stood up. “Never you mind, cupcake,” she said, and then, “Are we going to Mariah’s Easter sale or what?”
Ella cringed. That was not a good answer. Stacy was a law-abiding citizen for the most part, but from time to time, she had a slight problem with the law part of that. It had started in her teens with a little shoplifting. Ella remembered the first time she’d come home with some cheap earrings, slipped into her pocket at the dollar store. Ella had been shocked and alarmed. Stacy had thought it was funny. It happened several times, and she’d been caught more than once, had gotten into a lot of trouble that included a short stint in juvenile hall. Judges weren’t very sympathetic when it came to stealing.
Twice, an unwitting Ella had been held with her. Guilty by association was a real thing. Both times, Ella had been let go because she wasn’t a thief. Both times, she’d gotten a look from the officers that clearly relayed their skepticism about her innocence.
Talk about heart-pounding fear—Ella’s worst nightmare was ending up in jail and sharing a cell with her mother. Everything she did was to avoid her mother’s fate. But Stacy had seemed to think nothing of taking Ella down with her, or risking it all for so little.
That had been a long time ago, when they were juveniles. The stakes were higher now, and Ella worried that Stacy would push things so far she would get into serious trouble and disappear, just like Ella’s mother had. She’d be devastated if that happened—Stacy was the closest thing to family she had. There were times she wished some Lilliputians would suddenly appear and lasso Stacy to the ground. Just keep her tied up so she couldn’t shoplift hair extensions and earrings and whatever else she’d taken.
And yet, as much as Ella despised what Stacy did, she understood it in that strange, foster-kid way she had of seeing the world. People who grew up in foster care understood things that other people with happy childhoods couldn’t possibly get. Being removed from a family and passed around screwed with a person’s head. You learned not to trust anyone. You learned not to believe what adults told you. You learned how to cope without help from anyone.
Most kids figured out how to make it bearable. Shoplifting had been Stacy’s way of making it bearable. Ella did not understand the psychology behind that, but Stacy’s habit of stealing generally ramped up when she was under a lot of pressure. She was under pressure now—she and the Rodeo Rebels had no money but had a chance to sign with a record label if they could make it to Nashville. For all her faults, Stacy was an electric performer and an excellent singer, and she wanted that chance more than life.
“Stop it,” Stacy said suddenly.
Ella looked at her.
“Stop worrying about me all the time.”
Jesus, that was uncanny. Ella mentally instructed the Lilliputians to crawl back under their toadstools. “I’m not worrying. I’m imagining how wrong black-and-white stripes are with your coloring.”
“I’m fine, Ella. Everything is fine.”
So, in other words, everything was not fine.
“Are we going to Mariah’s, or not?” Stacy asked impatiently.
“Yep,” Ella said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Nine
Just like Ella could not get over her high school crush twelve years beyond high school, Mariah could not get over being pissed at Stacy for stealing Cash Proctor from her. From Ella’s vantage point, Stacy didn’t really steal Cash Proctor, because Cash had never really seemed into Mariah at all and had in fact been stringing a number of girls along. And still, Mariah blamed Stacy.
Over the years, they’d been friendly. But not friends.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” Stacy said, looking around. She’d never been in Mariah’s shop and always had an excuse ready not to come.
“Thank you,” Mariah said. “Nice hair extensions.”
Stacy jerked her gaze to Mariah. “Thanks,” she said uncertainly. “They’re Russian.”
Whatever that meant.
“So where’s the sale I heard about?” Stacy asked, wandering between the racks.
“This rack is twenty-five percent off,” Mariah said, pointing. “That one is fifty, and the row of clothes at the back is all seventy-five percent off.”
“I like seventy-five,” Stacy said, and disappeared into the clothes.
Ella smiled at frowning Mariah. “So guess what? I might actually have a new client,” she announced.
“Really?” Mariah asked, perking up. “Who?”
“Baptist Ladies Auxiliary. One of them was at the winter carnival.” The elderly couple who didn’t need Ella’s services apparently were affiliated with a ladies group that did need her services. “The president is on a cruise or something right now, but when they start back up next month, I’m going to meet them. If I get the job, that will be three paying customers,” she said brightly. “Tell Randy to put that in his no-clients pipe and smoke it.”
Mariah laughed. “I’ll tell him, I sure will. Who else have you got, again?”
“The funeral home,” Ella said, holding up a finger. “The ladies group. And Rodeo Rebels.”
Mariah glanced at Stacy, who was draping clothes over her arm, then leaned toward Ella and whispered, “Are they really making any money?”
“Yes, Mariah, we are making money!” Stacy called out in a singsong voice without turning from her perusal of a rack of clothes.
Mariah looked to Ella for confirmation. Ella shook her head. The Rodeo Rebels were not making real money.
Stacy sauntered to the front of the store, her arms laden with clothes. “Where can I try these on?”
Mariah pointed to a curtained cubby. “Let us see them on you,” she suggested as Stacy sashayed by.
“Maybe,” Stacy said as she disappeared into the changing room.
Mariah rolled her eyes when Stacy was out of sight. “Aren’t you going to look at the sale? I’ve got some great pieces on the seventy-five-percent-off rack,” she said to Ella.
“I’ll look. But I’m broke,” Ella warned her, and walked to the back of the store to browse.
She’d just found a purple dress with tiny gold puppies romping in sprouts of flowers when she heard the little bell on the shop’s door jingle.
“Hallie Prince!” Mariah said, her voice full of delight.
Ella froze. Hallie? The Hallie Prince? Prince Luca’s twin princess?
“Hello, Mariah. How are you?”
Ella quietly put the dress back on the rack and snuck around the end of it, trying to disappear.
“I’m really good!” Mariah said. “How are you? Oh, hey, I was so sorry to hear about your dad.”
“Thank you,” Hallie said.
“Hey, you remember Ella Kendall, don’t you?” Mariah said.
Ella stifled a sigh and reluctantly stepped out from behind the dress carousel. Wow. She’d seen Hallie up on the stage at the winter carnival, but up close, Hallie Prince was beautiful. She didn’t look any older than she had in high school, but she looked more elegant. She was perfectly trim, dressed in a slim skirt and stiletto heels, a silk blouse. Her strawberry blond hair was cut in a perfect long lob. “Hi,” Ella said.
Hallie slowly turned her hazel eyes—Luca’s eyes—to Ella. “Ohmigod, Ella? Ella Kendall?”
“Um . . . yes,” Ella said, and nervously pushed her hair from her eyes. For heaven’s sake, why was she so nervous? She had to be the most socially awkward person ever.
“Hi!” Hallie said, as if they were long-lost friends and smiled. Happily.
“You . . . you remember me?” Ella asked stupidly.
“Of course I remember you!” Hallie said brightly, and shifted her Céline bag onto her shoulder as she came forward. “Why wouldn’t I remember you?”
“Because your brother didn’t remember her,” Stacy’s disembodied voice said, and Ella felt her stomach drop. Stacy and her big mouth.
“Who, Nick?” Hallie asked the voice.
“Luca!”
Hallie looked confused. “But he told me he ran into you.”
“Hey, do you remember me?” The disembodied voice of Stacy was dramatically revealed to be an actual person when Stacy threw back the curtain and stepped out in a slinky silver dress that was way too tight. But Ella could tell by the way Stacy posed that she loved it.
“Stacy Perry! How are you?” Hallie said.
“I’m great. And you’re looking fine as usual, Hallie.”
“Thank you,” Hallie said.
“It’s nice to see you, Hallie,” Ella said quietly.
“You too, Ella,” she said, and strangely, at least to Ella, she sounded as if she genuinely meant it. “I didn’t know you were back in Three Rivers.”
“She recently moved back from the city,” Mariah said. “She has a place out in the country now. Actually, it’s next to Three Rivers Ranch.”
“It is?” Hallie frowned thoughtfully, then said, “Oh, of course! The old Kendall place!”
“That’s the one,” Ella said. “I inherited it from my grandmother.”
“Oh.” Hallie continued to look at her curiously, as if waiting for more information.
Ella tried to rattle a few coherent thoughts together by dragging her fingers through her hair. “She had Alzheimer’s.” She didn’t know why she added that detail. It wasn’t as if Hallie knew her grandmother. Ella had never been a chatty girl, because she had figured out at a very young age that the less she said, the fewer questions anyone asked of her. The only person for whom this rule did not apply was Stacy, who knew pretty much everything there was to know about her.
“I’m so sorry,” Hallie said. “That must have been hard.”
This was exactly what happened when Ella opened her mouth. Now Hallie was looking at her with sympathy, and Mariah was looking at her like she was a dolt, and Stacy was looking at herself in the mirror. Ella didn’t know how to explain that her grandmother’s death wasn’t hard, exactly, but more like a general disappointment that her life had ended like it had. General disappointment that Ella hadn’t been a better granddaughter, or that there were such looming familial gaps in her life that she’d never be able to fill.
“We were really sorry to hear about your dad, Hallie,” Stacy offered with a quick look at Ella. She always had Ella’s back, always knew when the walls were closing in and stepped in to push them back.
“Yes,” Ella said. “I am so sorry.”
“Thank you,” Hallie said. “He was here one minute and gone the next,” She snapped her fingers. “It was lights out, just like that.”
“That really sucks,” Stacy said.
Ella ran her palm down the side of her skirt. She wanted to say something that conveyed that she felt bad for Hallie. She couldn’t imagine what it was like to lose a beloved father like that. The closest she could come, besides her grandmother, was Mrs. Ellicott, her sixth-grade math teacher. And her tenth-grade math teacher. Ella had loved Mrs. Ellicott. She had skin as brown as the bronze statue of a mustang that stood outside the school entrance, and a wide, warm smile that she accentuated with bright red lipstick.
Somehow, Mrs. Ellicott had sensed that Ella was desperate for attention. Maybe she’d said something or done something, but in Ella’s memory, her teacher was sitting beside her in class one day, telling her that she had a gift for numbers, that she was smart. That she could be anything she wanted to be. Mrs. Ellicott never failed to say hello to her each morning as she monitored the kids coming in for school. On those days Ella stayed after school to do her homework in peace, Mrs. Ellicott gave her hard candies and made her promise not to tell anyone because, she said, she couldn’t give candy to all the kids.
Once, Ella had gotten in trouble for daydreaming in art class. Or that’s what her teacher had called it. The truth was that she’d been in a bad home placement, and she’d been exhausted and worried about what was going to happen to her there, and she couldn’t care less how to make a pinwheel from construction paper. She’d been sent to the principal’s office. Before the principal could do much other than admonish her, Mrs. Ellicott had come riding in like a knight to convince the principal that she ought to “make” Ella help her sort through some lessons in her classroom.
So Ella had helped sort the lessons and put them in brightly colored boxes. Mrs. Ellicott sang while they worked and told stories about all the people in her life. It had sounded like a dream to Ella—a big, loving family, full of laughter and light.
That afternoon had been one of the best of her school days.
Mrs. Ellicott continued to check in on her as Ella moved through the years, and in tenth grade, when Ella was in her class again, she told Ella she was smart enough to go to college. “You’re quick, and you’re thorough, Ella. You could go into finance or accounting. Dream big, hon—there is nothing stopping you but your own doubts,” she’d said, tapping Ella on the top of her head.
She’d continued to encourage Ella into her junior year. Dream big, hon. Dream big.
Then one day, Mrs. Ellicott wasn’t at school. Here one minute and gone the next. Lights out.
Ella still thought of her. Still missed her smile.
“So what are you up to these days, Hallie?” Stacy asked with a quick look at Ella that told her to snap out of it.
“Well,” Hallie said, a smile lighting her face. “I’m getting married.” She held out her hand to show them the ring. “With Dad gone we’re sort of rethinking when and all, but hopefully this year.”
She was sporting an enormous rock on her hand. “Wow, congratulations!” Ella said. “Who’s the lucky guy?”
“Christopher Davenport. He’s from Houston. He’s a surgeon,” she added proudly.
“Nice,” Stacy said approvingly.
Hallie lowered her hand. “What about you guys?”
“I’ve got a band,” Stacy said promptly and proudly. “The Rodeo Rebels. We have a show Saturday night and a rep from a Nashville recording agency is supposed to be there.”
“How exciting!” Hallie said. “I always thought you were the best singer in high school.”
“Thanks,” Stacy said, her amber eyes lighting up. “I feel really good about it. I even got a new dress for the occasion.”
New extensions, a new dress, and a dressing room full of clothes? Stacy was hardly making enough to cover her bills. Where was she getting the cash?
“What about you, Ella?” Hallie asked.
“I ah . . . well, I’m working at the Magnolia as a hostess a couple of nights a week,” she began.
“She’s an accountant!” Stacy said, and clucked her tongue at Ella.
“I’m trying to be,” Ella corrected her. “I’ve been begging Mariah to take me on.”
“What’s Luca up to these days?” Stacy asked, clearly not wanting to allow Mariah into the conversation.
“Luca? Oh, he’s, ah . . . well, he’s been gone a lot,” Hallie said. “He had to get away after dad died.”
“Yeah, I heard,” Stacy muttered.
“What?” Hallie asked.
“Is he seeing anyone?” Stacy asked.
Hallie blinked. Mariah looked like she might kill Stacy i
f she said another word, but she’d have to beat Ella to it. She mouthed the words, shut up. It was her own damn fault for opening her big mouth and gushing about Luca’s visit. She wished she’d never told Stacy about running into him at the Magnolia and again at the winter carnival. She wished she’d never told Stacy anything, period.
Hallie laughed at her question. “Luca is always seeing someone. He hasn’t changed at all.”
“Really?” Stacy asked, and pulled her hair from its bun and shook it out. It hung almost to her waist. “I thought maybe he’d settled down by now. Frankly, I’m amazed he’s still hanging around Three Rivers.”
“Well, we’re all trying to pitch in and help Mom, you know? Speaking of which, I need to get going. I just popped in to see if you carry Spanx, Mariah. I’ve got to go to a charity thing in Houston this weekend and my dress is a little tight.” She laughed self-consciously and rubbed her very flat abdomen.
“As tight as the dress Stacy has on?” Mariah asked with a mischievous smile. “Of course I do—it’s my biggest selling brand.”
“It was great to see you again, Ella, and you, too, Stacy,” Hallie said as she moved to follow Mariah.
“Same,” Stacy said. “Be sure and tell Luca that Ella and I said hello,” she added, and winked at Ella before slipping into her dressing room.
Hallie had gone with a little wave by the time Stacy emerged from the dressing room wearing another dress. “Well that was interesting,” Stacy said as she studied herself in the mirror.
“Why?” Mariah asked.
“Didn’t Ella tell you? Luca Prince didn’t remember who she was,” Stacy said.
Jesus and Mary. “Stacy? Can you stop talking?” Ella asked, and looked at Mariah as her face heated. “He didn’t remember me at first.”
“I told you not to get too excited about him,” Stacy opined.