“Mrs. Gosset called about two teenagers making out on her front lawn.” Jackson glanced back at the house behind them. Monica turned and saw the silhouette of a woman in the window beside the front door.
“We haven’t seen any teenagers,” Monica said, trying to create a little levity, but no one laughed.
“Sorry to make you come out here, Gloria,” Jackson said.
“Well, no problem. But maybe you want to … take it inside?”
Am I the it? Monica wondered.
“Yes. Of course. And Gloria …” Jackson stepped closer to the car. “I don’t need to ask you not to talk about this, do I?”
You just did, Monica thought. But Gloria, Monica could see, now that the flashlight wasn’t blinding her, was assuring Jackson that he didn’t need to do anything of the kind. Yes, clearly Gloria was going to take the fact that she’d seen the Golden Boy Mayor making out with the Wild Child to her grave.
Yeah, right.
But Gloria drove off, wishing both of them a good night, and suddenly the night was cooler, the world a little bigger than it had been just moments ago. And she wanted to go back to just the two of them in the darkness. The two of them and the kiss, and the touch of his hands and the aching tension low in her body.
“I cannot believe that just happened,” he breathed up at the stars.
She laughed, and at his murderous look she laughed harder. “Come on, Mayor. It’s a little harmless necking. Hardly the end of the world.”
It took a moment, and frankly, she wasn’t sure if he’d ever smile, but his lip finally curled. “This has never happened to me.”
“You’ve never been caught kissing?” How hilarious! She’d spent two years on that reality show making sure she got caught kissing at every turn. “Not even in high school?”
“I was … careful, then.”
The implication was that he wasn’t careful tonight. Because of her, because something about her made him act out of character, lose some of that tightly wound control.
Before it even registered, she squashed her emotional reaction to that. Because the fact that she cared, that she found deep in her chest some sort of feminine pride in that, was shocking.
It was just a kiss.
But she couldn’t even buy her own bullshit. For other women it was just a kiss. For her it was the first step down a road she had no interest in retraveling.
It started off as being complimented, feeling a certain pride that he responded to her the way he did, but it ended—and she knew this—it ended with throwing away all her hard-won feminine independence. She didn’t need a man to define her worth; she didn’t need sex to be her compass. The attraction of men was a shit currency and she knew that better than anyone.
But one kiss from this man, one offhand comment about how she affected him, and she could feel herself tying her pleasure, her pride, her sense of self to a man’s attraction to her.
How disappointing.
Now she was grateful for the wide world, the space between them. She needed a world’s worth of distance between herself and her mistakes and this man who would take her right back there.
Monica’s lips glistened in the lamplight, and it took everything he had to look away from her. His mind, thick and slow from the kiss, from being caught in such a position by the police chief of all people, ran around in circles, sure of only one thing.
Monica was a terrible distraction.
Despite the embarrassment of being caught like that—despite the town, the contest, his sister—she could make him forget every one of his thousand responsibilities. He would throw all of them onto the back burner just for more … of her.
Dangerous. So damn dangerous.
The beginning of that kiss had been tense. Despite her flirting, despite her willingness, he’d felt the fight in her. That moment of panic when he thought she’d run, push him away and vanish into the night.
He didn’t like to think what that might mean.
But then, as if his fingers under the edge of her shirt, right at her spine, had unlocked her, she melted against him. Arched to meet him. It had been sweet and hot and about the most perfect moment in his life in as long as he could remember.
Whatever “show” she was talking about, he didn’t know if that was it. All he knew was that she was viciously, sublimely exciting.
But she was staring at him, her eyes deep and dark, and he realized that whatever her reasons were, the kiss was a mistake for her, too.
Ironic that it stung.
“I’ll walk you home,” he said.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Yeah … I do.”
The night had taken some strange turns, but when he turned and walked down the road with Monica close enough that her shirt touched his, he was electrified all along the side of his body.
The dog pranced ahead.
Before he realized it, he smiled. A real smile, not his mayor smile. And he knew in a heartbeat that if Monica had come back to town just two months from now, after the contest was all over, things would have been different between them.
But then, he wasn’t going to be here in two months. It was now or never for them, and it absolutely couldn’t be now.
Which left them with never.
Jackson held open the front door to the Peabody and Monica slipped in.
“Good night.” His voice curled over her shoulder and when she glanced back at him, his face was half-shadowed. His lips dark, his eyes bright. Oh. Those eyes … in those eyes she saw the echo of the loneliness that lived in her heart.
“Monica—” This was the start of a conversation she didn’t want to have.
“Stop, Jackson—it was a mistake for me too.”
There was nothing else to say, and he nodded in maybe grim, maybe sad concession. Hard to tell.
“Good night.” Reba at her feet barked and she saw the upward curve of Jackson’s half-smile. “ ’Night, Rambo.”
And then he was gone and she was walking through the Peabody with its golden lamplight beating back the worst of the Arkansas night. Behind the desk was Jay, who waved with one hand and seemed nervous, probably because of that photo thing yesterday. She gave him the warmest smile she was capable of at the moment and climbed the steps to her room.
Through the door, she heard the sharp ring of the telephone. Weird. Who would call her at the hotel? She thought of Jackson and despite it all, despite everything she knew in her head, she got a thrill in her belly.
The instant the door was open, Reba raced past her for the prime spot on the bed.
Monica crossed the room and grabbed the phone on the third ring.
“Hello?”
“Monica?”
That voice, low and feminine. Southern at the edges, steel at its core, it unlocked something in her head, a dark room that she loathed. A dark room full of dark stories and memories and snakes and every monster under the bed.
No. No. Not this. Not now.
Monica pulled the receiver away from her ear.
“Don’t hang up!” the voice shot out of the dark, and she was flooded with fight-or-flight instincts. Reba watched her and, as if sensing her dismay, growled low in her throat. “Honey, please don’t hang up.”
The endearment moved her and, standing in the dark, the monsters breathing down her neck, she sighed.
“Hello, Mother.”
Chapter 6
Monica used to love her mom. Not just in the generic way all children love their moms, but after the murder, after Simone had been acquitted, and she and Monica fled the United States and the press and the memories, Monica cherished her mother. Cared for her, as if Monica had become the parent and Simone the child.
Simone drank too much in London, started doing drugs with the rail-thin English models they were staying with.
So Monica dumped out the booze. Hid the drugs.
With their lips curled and their hands in bony white fists, Simone’s friends called her—unkindly—the littl
e mother. And they weren’t wrong.
After it got cold in London they went to Greece.
They lived in a small room behind a house. Monica remembered that the room was blue, and the curtains had red roosters on them. Simone spent days in the bed, staring out that window. Monica read books on the floor beside the bed, unwilling to leave her mom’s side. She made her mother soup and stood over her to make sure she ate it.
Monica was seven by then. Her birthday was spent begging her mother to get out of bed.
After Greece it was Paris, and Simone started to come back to life, only with harder edges, longer silences. But Monica remembered being happy because they used to get chocolate croissants and take naps along the Seine. They spent the days together, out in the city, walking hand in hand along the cobblestone streets. Now, of course, she realized that Simone had to keep them out of the apartment during the day—the price of being able to sleep there at night.
But sometimes, even now, she dreamt of cobblestone streets and chocolate croissants and she woke up crying.
“How did you find me?” Monica asked, swamped by the memories brought in by the sound of her mother’s voice. So powerful, she imagined the scent of Shalimar. As if Simone were there. In the room.
She imagined her in pieces, never able to fully see her mother as a whole. The famous cheekbones, the flawless skin, the cold smile, the calculation behind those famous purple eyes.
“I read the Rolling Stone article.”
“Why are you calling?”
“I would think that was obvious.”
Monica bit down hard on her back teeth. “Illuminate me.”
“I want to stop you from writing that book.”
“Now that is surprising.” With her suddenly thick and clumsy fingers, it took a few tries for Monica to unclip Reba’s leash. “I would think that you’d love me writing a book about you.”
“You want to write a book about me? About that reality show I made you do when you were a kid? Fine. Do it. Tell the world how I screwed you up. But don’t write a book about that night.”
“That night. Listen to you, you can’t even own up to it—”
“The night your father tried to kidnap you and strangle me, and I stopped him by putting a bullet in his chest.”
The silence buzzed, like a sound system turned up too loud without music. Monica swallowed. She took her time hanging the leash over the bathroom doorknob, making sure the weight was distributed just right so it didn’t slide to the floor. Something about all those words put together like that made her small again. A girl.
“Have I owned up to it enough for you?”
“Why do you care?” Monica murmured, wishing her voice were stronger. Wishing she hadn’t put all that hate from her teenage years behind her. She could use some hate; she could use something to keep herself grounded. Because she felt about as substantial as fluff.
“I have always cared.”
Monica’s laugh was full of poison, but Simone was silent.
“I’m not sure when I started giving you the impression that I didn’t care, but I’m sorry you feel that way.”
“This is very old ground, Mom. Tell me why you’ve tracked me down to try—far too late, I might add—to tell me what to do.”
Simone took a deep breath, as if pulling herself together, bracing herself for impact, and it was so surprising, Monica stood still in the middle of her room, wondering what could make Simone unsure of herself. Everything Simone did was planned, staged. She knew the angles, the lighting, her best side. Nothing was unscripted; there was no room for chance in her life.
“Because if you write this book you can’t go back. You’ll let the whole world into the darkest corner of your life—”
“You’re one to talk, Mom! You air your laundry every week on national television. And a fair amount of mine, I might add.”
“But I have never talked about JJ. Ever.”
Monica blinked, stunned to realize it was the truth. Simone might have spent two seasons auditioning young men to be her lover, but she’d never publically talked about JJ. Dad.
“It’s a choice,” Simone said, taking advantage of Monica’s silence. “What I do is a choice. I choose what to show the world, and I have made the choice to never show them that.”
It was on the tip of Monica’s tongue to ask why, but she shook her head. She didn’t really care. “You’re worried about your reputation,” she said, assuming the worst.
“No.” Simone’s denial was said with such power, with such precision, that Monica had to fiddle with the leash again, as if it were the most important thing in the world. “I’m worried about you. About what it will mean for you if you keep giving yourself away like this. Handing out your secrets and your pain and your mistakes as if they mean nothing. As if by putting it all down on paper it loses its power to hurt you.”
“It doesn’t hurt me!” she barked. “I barely remember that night. And it’s too late. The contracts are signed. The deadlines are set.”
“Send back the money. Get out of it.”
Monica almost told her mother she was broke. Almost. But she stopped herself just in time.
“If you need the money …” Simone said, apparently with the sixth sense that comes with motherhood despite being shitty at it.
“It’s an important cultural event.” Her editor’s words gave her a little bravado, and she lifted her chin. “And I have a personal attachment to it.”
“It’s scandal and gossip.”
“Once again, Mom, you are one to talk.”
“You are trying so hard to pretend that you’re better than me because you write books with the word ‘non-fiction’ on the spine. But you’re just like me, digging through your life for little shiny bits and scary bits and terrifying bits to show the world so they have something to talk about at work, so they can feel better about their own lives because ours are such a mess.”
Monica shook her head, denying it. Denying her. Wishing all over again that there was nothing between them. No connection, not even blood. Wishing somehow that she could sever all of it. Monica wasn’t blind enough to pretend innocence in the great rift between herself and her mother. She’d done her fair share of damage, but those years—those lost years when she’d felt unprotected and vulnerable, when the questions about what had happened with her father, to their family, had been brushed aside—those years were her mother’s fault.
“I am nothing like you, Mom. Nothing.”
“I know you want to believe that.”
“There’s nothing you can do to stop me from writing this book.”
Even if she didn’t need the money, even if she was squeamish about going back into those dark days, she’d still write the damn book just to piss her mother off.
Not healthy, not at all, but the truth. The truth dug up from the place where she kept it buried.
I guess I do still hate her.
There were silver sparkles at the edge of her vision—a headache approached.
“We’re done, Mom. We were done fourteen years ago. Don’t contact me again.”
Monica hung up. Which she should have done the second she heard her mother’s voice, the second she imagined the ghostly scent of her mother’s favorite perfume.
Monica collapsed on the bed and Reba climbed up on her chest, licking her chin. It was strange comfort, but Monica couldn’t afford to be picky.
“What a night, dog,” she whispered.
She closed her eyes, feeling young. Unsafe.
Chapter 7
It was getting harder and harder to breathe.
Shelby Monroe opened the window, despite having the air-conditioning on. Despite the red Arkansas dust that swirled in through the window. She couldn’t breathe.
Every mile that brought her closer to home, closer to her life, suffocated her.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said out loud in an effort to calm herself down. Every time she came home from the annual Teachers of Fine and Indus
trial Arts Convention held in Memphis, she felt this way. Like she was burning through the atmosphere as she reentered her world.
This year was worse. And it was all because of the thong.
How do women wear these? she wondered, shifting uncomfortably in the driver’s seat of her Taurus.
For two years she’d been flirting with Eric Long, sitting with him at the bar, nursing a white wine spritzer while everyone else went to bed. For two years she’d thought, breathlessly, that he was going to ask her up to his hotel room. And she’d waited. And waited. Two years.
Which was why she’d decided that this year, if he didn’t ask, she would ask him.
That had been her plan. To drink three white wine spritzers and ask Eric, a balding high school Agriculture teacher with sweaty hands, up to her hotel room. For sex. Yep. Sex.
But Eric had shown up this year wearing a wedding ring. And showing everyone pictures of a honeymoon with a tiny brunette in the Ozarks. And Shelby had thought for one long, horrifying moment that she might actually burn to dust in embarrassment. As if everyone could see what she’d been planning. As if everyone could see that under her Land’s End denim skirt, she was wearing a pink thong. Just one of a bunch of thongs she’d had to mail-order because she was too embarrassed to go to the mall and buy them in person.
All of her friends at the conference, not just Eric, were showing off pictures of babies and diamond rings and telling stories about honeymoon cruises.
And she was still living with her mother.
“Oh God,” she moaned, hating her life.
It wasn’t as if she expected some grand love affair to come her way. She wasn’t the kind of woman who got swept off her feet; she fully realized that. Her feet were so rooted to the ground where she was raised, it was amazing she wasn’t covered in kudzu.
Practicality had its own list of benefits, but romance was never included.
She topped a hill covered in willows and in front of her, on the long stretch of red dusty road, she saw Mrs. O’Hara’s burgundy 1977 Cadillac El Dorado on the shoulder, steam rolling out from under the hood.
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