by Lori Wilde
She went to the refrigerator and opened the freezer.
“What are you looking for?”
“Something to ice that eye with. Do you have any frozen peas?”
“Hate them.”
She spied a bag of chopped bananas. They would do. She rummaged in the drawers, found a kitchen towel, and wrapped the bag of bananas in it, and then took it to him. “Put this on your eye. You look like you’ve gone fifteen rounds with Mike Tyson.”
“Twelve.”
“What?”
“Title fights are twelve rounds. They don’t fight fifteen rounds anymore.”
“But I bet it feels like fifteen.”
“Yeah, it does.”
Silence fell over them. The only noise was the ticking of the kitchen clock and the hum of the refrigerator. He looked pristinely disheveled in his torn tuxedo. His white shirt was dotted with blood, his collar torn.
He took a deep breath. Winced again. “Damn, it hurts to breathe. I think I might have cracked a rib.”
“Luke, why didn’t you say something? We should get you to a doctor.”
“No need. There’s nothing they can do for a cracked rib, a black eye, and a busted lip.”
She fisted her hands. She could punch someone herself right now for causing him pain. “They could give you some pain meds.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to dull the pain. I need it as a reminder.”
“Of what?”
“The kind of suffering this feud causes. And this is small-scale stuff. I need to remember.”
“I never forgot.”
His eye met hers. She saw something disquieting there. “I know. I can’t forget. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
“Luke?”
“Yeah?”
“Why am I here?”
“You were going to tend my wounds.”
“Not that. Why am I in Cupid?”
He swallowed. “We needed you.”
“No you didn’t. Anyone could be doing the things I’m doing.”
“Not with your originality and flair. Besides, you were jobless and homeless when I found you.”
“But you didn’t know that when you came up to New York. What was your real motive?”
He swallowed, blew out his breath through puffed cheeks, winced. “I’ve thought about you a lot over the years.”
Her throat seized up and she couldn’t say what she wanted to say. Me too.
“I’m ready to get married, settle down, Melody, and you were the first person I thought of.”
Panic shot through her. “What are you saying? That you want to marry me?”
He gave her a one-sided smile, sparing the side that was cut and bruised. “That’s not what I meant.” For a long moment, he didn’t say anything else.
“What did you mean?” she prompted.
He shrugged, grimaced. “I realized I couldn’t be a good husband to anyone until I dealt with the past. Our past.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “So you were actually tired of sweeping it under the rug yourself.”
“Talking about that night. Finally coming to peace with what happened. Learn from those mistakes. Hell, Melody, I’m scared I’ll get married and have kids and the same thing that happened to us will happen to them.”
“Why not just move away from Cupid?”
“The Rocking N is part of me. It’s been in my family for five generations and if I leave there’s no one to take over. Carly’s got her own family and her life in Marfa, and she’s not interested in ranching. Jesse’s gone. My dad is in no shape to handle the responsibility. It’s all on my shoulders.”
Responsibility.
That she understood. She couldn’t look at his damaged face any longer. She turned away. “Where do you keep the antiseptic? That lip needs to be cleaned.”
“I don’t give a damn about the lip, Melody. I want to talk about this.”
Her heart beat against her chest, a wild bird trying to break free. “Why? I still don’t see how talking about it is going to change things.”
He got up from the chair so forcefully it tipped over and hit the floor. Bam.
She cringed.
He came toward her, wrapped an arm around her. “Because I want to be with you, Melody. Don’t you get it? That’s why I agreed to the sex-only thing. I was hoping to change your mind.”
“Luke.” She shook her head, backed up.
“I loved you,” he said.
Melody caught her breath. He’d never said the words to her back then. “You did?”
“More than you can ever know. What happened between us destroyed me. How could I love you when my love for you caused my family such great pain? Because of the fact that I loved you, Jesse died.”
“We’re always going to be haunted by that night, aren’t we?”
“Until there’s peace between our families. Now do you understand why I try so hard to keep the peace around here?”
“I do.”
“So why did you defy my wishes, Juliet?”
Dread flooded her body and she couldn’t move. He knew. That’s why he’d been acting so odd with her. “How … how do you know?”
“I found first drafts of the Juliet letters in your office desk.”
She gulped, knotted her hands, didn’t breathe.
“What I can’t figure out is why you didn’t destroy those drafts?” He shook his head.
Why hadn’t she? Had she secretly been hoping someone would stumble across the letters and she’d be found out? “Luke, I can explain. I—”
“You deceived me,” he said. “Plain and simple. But I’m sure it’s not your fault. That’s just advertising, right? Just the way they do things on Madison Avenue.”
His sarcasm cut her slick as a whetted knife. Her stomach turned to stone and a white heat spread throughout her body like a pathogen. “Excuse me? I deceived you? Better climb down off that high horse, Mayor. Eloise told me you paid me from your own pocket. That’s not exactly on the up-and-up.”
“That’s different. I was trying to help you.”
“And I was trying to help the town and oh, oops, it looks like I did. My deception brought tourists into the town. It filled the motels and the restaurants. It got people talking about Cupid. Face it, Luke. You were wrong about what it took to end this feud and I was right. We have to own it because it’s our story. Secrecy gives the feud power. Feeds the ugly emotions.”
“Um, yes, because your method worked so well tonight. Thanks to your nifty little plan, Juliet, I look like this.” He tossed the bag of bananas across the room. It hit the wall with a resounding thump that made her jump. “And if you’re so eager to ‘own’ the feud, why don’t you tell the truth? Make an announcement. Admit to all your online friends that there is no Juliet. Announce that you lied and deceived them too.”
“If people find out Juliet was fictional there’ll be a backlash against Cupid. We’ll lose all the gains we made with tourism.”
“Well,” he said. “You should have damn well thought about that before you wrote those letters. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like very much to go to bed. Alone.”
LUKE WAS RIGHT about everything. Her lie had caused more problems than it solved.
Why had she strayed so far from her principles? Why had she let what happened in New York affect the way she’d conducted herself in Cupid? Why had she bought into Michael Helmsly’s assertion that the truth was rubbery? The success she’d enjoyed here was a lie, and now, when the truth came out, the people of her hometown would be the ones to suffer.
Feeling miserable to the core, Melody couldn’t even bring herself to eat the delicious breakfast she’d ordered at La Hacienda Grill.
Ricardo came bopping from the back over to her table, his eyes bright. “Miss Melody,” he said. “You are a goddess. I want to worship at your feet. Because of those letters you published from Juliet, I made more money the past three days than I’ve made in the last two months. It’s i
ncredible. Unbelievable. If this keeps up, I will be saved from bankruptcy. Thank you. Thank you. Your breakfast is free from now on.”
She barely managed a smile. False praise. How could she ever tell the truth when it had the power to destroy good, honest, hardworking folks like Ricardo? “No,” she said. “I insist on paying for my breakfast.”
“Please.” He held up his palms. “It is my honor to serve you.”
“All right,” she said, but after he walked away, she left a twenty-dollar bill on the table to cover the seven-dollar tab.
She walked into the Chamber of Commerce. Emma Lee was behind the desk looking pale and unhappy.
“What’s wrong?” Melody asked.
“My parents think I’m Juliet. They think I’m pregnant with Billy Nielson’s baby. They want me to give it up for adoption. I’m a virgin, but they don’t even believe me.”
“Oh, Emma Lee, I’m so sorry you’re going through this. Get them to take you to a doctor. That will convince them you’re telling the truth.”
“It won’t convince them to let me date Billy,” she said woefully.
Not knowing what else to do, she patted Emma Lee on the shoulder. When she’d written those fictitious letters, she hadn’t thought about all the ramifications they would have in the lives of others. She’d been rash and shortsighted.
The door to the Chamber of Commerce opened and they looked up.
In the doorway stood a serious-looking, ebony-haired girl dressed in black and wearing dark-framed glasses. She looked like an English major from an Ivy League school, and Melody knew at once that she was from New York.
“Hello,” she said. “My name is Laurel Tucker and I’m an intern for the popular soft news TV program One Hour. I’m looking for Melody Spencer.”
“I’m Melody Spencer.”
Emma Lee’s eyes went wide. “One Hour? Wow. My dad watches that show all the time.”
“Glad to hear it,” Laurel said. “We were in the area, considering a follow-up story on a segment we did about Marfa last year. Did you happen to see it?”
“I did,” Melody said.
Emma Lee wrinkled her nose. “I don’t much watch One Hour myself. It’s all newsy with old people on it.”
“The episode is up on YouTube if you want to catch it,” Laurel told Emma Lee. Then she shifted her attention back to Melody. “Anyway, our chief interviewer, Jory Striver, just fell in love with the area when he was on location here and he was alarmed to learn about this terrible drought. When we heard about the letters from Juliet and how they turned the economy here in Cupid around, we were intrigued. We asked around town and learned you were the volunteer who answered Juliet’s letters. Is that correct?”
Melody nodded. “Yes.”
Laurel consulted her tablet computer. “My research has turned up that you used to work for the Tribalgate ad agency on Madison Avenue. Do you mind me asking why you left?”
Saying she got fired wasn’t the smart thing to do, so Melody went with the positive spin. “I missed my hometown.”
For a second, Laurel’s face shifted, softened. “I’m originally from Goose Neck, Idaho,” she said. “I understand what you mean. Sometimes the city can be so intrusive.”
“You don’t really appreciate your hometown until you’ve left it.”
“No indeed. If you’re willing, we’d love to interview you.”
“On One Hour?”
“Yes. Oh, and Miss Spencer, do you have any idea who Juliet really is? We’d love to interview her as well.”
It was on the tip of Melody’s tongue to tell the young woman the truth. That she had invented Juliet for publicity and as a means to try to put an end to the family feud.
But before she could get to it, Emma Lee spoke up. “I’m her. I’m Juliet.”
TWO DAYS LATER, Jory Striver was sitting in the Cupid Chamber of Commerce while the One Hour crew buzzed around them setting things up for the interview, while half the town of Cupid waited outside.
Melody had not seen or talked to Luke since the night of the Sadie Hawkins dance. He hadn’t shown up for the last Chamber of Commerce meeting and it made her miserable. She would have called him, except One Hour had given her a perfect opportunity to redeem herself.
She and Emma Lee waited in her office. The makeup artist had just finished with them and they were alone.
“Are you sure you really want to go on camera and tell a lie, Emma Lee?” She had already asked her a half-dozen times over the last two days.
“My parents already think I’m Juliet,” she said. “Why not get some mileage out of it? This could be my big break.”
“Just so you know, I have to tell the truth on camera. I should have told the truth the minute Laurel asked, but I was just so taken aback by your lie I didn’t have time to think it through. Plus, I wanted to give you a chance to come clean yourself.”
The girl looked truculent. “You’re gonna tattle on me?”
“People are going to find out soon enough that you’re not really Juliet.”
“Who cares? By then I will have already been on TV.” Emma Lee tossed her pretty red hair.
Melody rubbed her forehead with two fingers. The girl was complicating things. Hey, things have been complicated ever since you decided to spin a tall tale.
Laurel came to the doorway. “You guys ready?”
“Yep.” Emma Lee jumped to her feet.
“I have a request,” Melody said. “May I be interviewed first?”
Laurel pursed her lips. “Sure. Why not? We’ll edit to suit the piece. Come with me.”
“Aw man,” Emma Lee said. “I wanted to go first.”
“You’ll thank me later,” Melody whispered, and followed Laurel to the interview chair across from one of the finest journalists in the business. She was feeling pretty intimidated.
Jory Striver—who looked shorter in person than he did on TV—started off by asking her about why she’d left Madison Avenue. She meant to give him a pat answer about that, but it dawned on her if she was going to tell the truth, she had to tell it all.
“I was fired for being too honest.”
“I could see where honesty could get you into trouble in advertising.” Jory chuckled. “So tell me what it was like coming back home to Cupid and discovering your community was on hard times because of the drought.”
“I was horrified.”
“Understandably so. Your new job here was to revive the town by increasing tourism.”
“That’s correct.”
Jory spoke to the camera, telling about how the letter-writing tradition in Cupid began, and then he turned to her again. “Did you have any idea that when you published the letters from Juliet that it would have this kind of impact?”
“I hoped,” she said. “But I wasn’t certain. Because you see, Juliet isn’t a real person. She’s represented in spirit today by my young cousin Emma Lee Gossett, but I invented Juliet from an amalgamation of women I’ve known throughout the years.”
Jory looked taken aback. “You wrote the letters? Pretending to be Juliet?”
“I did,” Melody confessed. “And let me tell you why …”
Ten minutes later, as she finished telling about how Juliet came into being, including the whole story about Luke and her and the night Jesse died, there was a great commotion from the people outside the building. Whooping and hollering. What was up? A flash of electric blue lightning streaked the sky, and shortly thereafter a loud crack of thunder.
“Praise the Lord,” someone said. “It’s finally raining.”
THE ONE HOUR segment aired on Sunday. Melody sat watching it with her extended family gathered at her parents’ house.
“That was really brave of you, daughter,” her mother said. “I’m proud of you.”
“You’re not mad that I lied about Juliet?”
“Are you kidding?” said her father. “It took a lot of guts to get up there on national TV and admit your mistakes.”
Melody blew out her breath. She’d been so worried about how her family was going to take the news. She hadn’t expected them to understand, much less approve of what she’d done. “But I lied.”
“It was for the greater good,” Great-Aunt Delia said. “And in the end, you came clean.”
“And it rained while you were doing it,” her mother said. “I consider that a sign that God approved.”
Well, Melody didn’t know about that, but it felt good to be accepted for who she was, imperfections and all. But she couldn’t help wondering if Luke had seen the program and if he had, what did he think?
Her cell phone rang. Luke? She plucked the phone from her pocket, held her breath when she saw the caller ID.
Tribalgate.
“Hello?” she said tentatively.
“Melody, Michael Helmsly here.”
It took her a full second to remember who Michael Helmsly was. She was so caught up in what was going on in Cupid, her old life felt a million miles away.
“I just saw you on One Hour,” he said. “I have to say, brilliant work.”
“What do you mean?”
“A fictitious letter about a family feud, a letter that ended up saving an entire town? I have to say, I’m impressed. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I think.”
“Listen, the reason I’m calling is that the person we hired as your replacement simply isn’t working out. She doesn’t have your work ethic.”
“I thought my ethics were troubling to you.”
“Ah,” he said. “I should have expected you to bust my chops over this. Go ahead and get it off your chest.”
“Actually, Michael, I have to thank you.”
“For what?”
“Showing me the error of my ways. You taught me how to lie and look what happened. Poof, I’m on One Hour and you’re calling to suck up.”
“Firing you was hasty. I admit I made a mistake. Will you come back?”
“Not for my previous salary.”
He paused. “All right. How about a promotion to creative director with a twenty-five-thousand-dollar yearly bump up.”