Not a single day went by that I didn’t miss him. There was a Hal-sized hole in my heart that I knew would never be filled.
“Now it’s time to stop playing games and come home,” my mother spoke with an authority she’d rarely used when she was raising me.
“You want me to move back home with you?” I asked with sarcastic sincerity. It was my coping mechanism when dealing with Tina York. Sarcasm was the only way I hadn’t completely lost my sanity while growing up in the home of a woman who bragged about being equal parts Peggy Bundy and Dolly Parton, again non-ironically.
“Don’t sass me, little missy. I’m still your mama.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I responded in the verbal equivalent of a knee-jerk reaction.
My Southern roots ran deep. It didn’t matter that my mother had never been in the running for Mom of the Year, I still had some home training and responded to her with respect.
“Now this has gone on long enough. You know people are callin’ you a runaway bride. I just spoke to Blaine and he said that if you come home now he won’t—”
“He won’t what?!” The words flew from my mouth with the velocity of a ninety-mile-per-hour fast ball and the volume of a catcher yelling, “Hey, batta, batta.”
“He won’t call off the wedding,” my mama finished.
“He won’t?” I had to laugh. “Mama, I called off the wedding. He doesn’t have a choice.”
“Oh no, he worked that all out. We met with Bianca this morning and—”
“You met with our wedding planner?”
“Of course I did. The wedding’s next Saturday and—”
“Mom, listen to me. There’s not going to be a wedding next Saturday. I’m not going to marry Blaine. Not Saturday. Not ever.”
I felt like I was going crazy. For the past week I’d been talking in circles with her. She wasn’t listening to a word I said. Or if she was, it wasn’t sinking in.
I’d told her exactly what I’d walked in on, in graphic detail. She knew that I’d moved to Firefly and accepted a new job. I honestly didn’t understand where the breakdown in communication was.
“You’re always so dramatic,” she said dismissively.
I opened my mouth and let out a silent scream. If I’d been anywhere other than where I was, it would not have been silent.
“Listen, honey, these things happen. Best not to dwell on it and just move on.”
I took a deep breath. “Mama, I’m not the one dwelling on this. And I am moving on. I moved on to Georgia.”
“Like I said, you made your point. He knows that he messed up and he’s had his slap on the wrist. You know this little stunt could’ve cost you your wedding at The Plaza. But you should’ve seen him this morning with Bianca, he fixed everything.”
My little stunt.
He fixed everything.
“I’m not going to marry a man that cheats on me. It’s that simple.”
“Honey, don’t be so naïve. If you think you’re the first woman who walked in on their husband banging his secretary?”
“It was Heather?”
All I’d seen was brown hair. I’d just assumed it was Julie the new paralegal. I’d seen the way she looked at him.
Heather Donnelly had been Blaine’s executive assistant for six years. I considered her a friend. I knew her parents. She was in our wedding.
“It doesn’t matter who it was. Men cheat. That’s just life.”
“Hal didn’t cheat.”
“Hal was…” I could hear the sadness in my mom’s voice. She missed him as much as I did. “You’re never going to find someone like him, Fancy. That is an unrealistic standard that is too high for anyone to ever reach.”
I didn’t agree with most things that came out of my mom’s mouth, but I did agree with that. I would never find anyone like Hal.
“Mom, I have to go. I’ll call you later. Love you.”
She was still talking as I hung up. I considered calling Blaine to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing going to meet with Bianca but decided against it. I wasn’t going to play his games. This was a strategic move on his part. He was using my mom. He invited her to go with him to the wedding planner, when it was easily something that he could’ve taken care of himself, because he knew that my mother would call and tell me.
A light knock on my door drew my eyes upward, and I smiled when I saw Nadia. Nadia had been in Texas over the weekend visiting her grandmother when I arrived in Firefly so we hadn’t been able to catch up.
“Hey, lady! What are you doing here?” I was surprised to see her in the middle of the day. She was a teacher and had mentioned that she didn’t get off for spring break until next week. I glanced at the clock and saw that it was after three.
“Hey, chica. I’ve got an hour before I have to be back for a meeting. Got time for a quick cup of coffee?”
“Yes. Let me just grab my bag.”
I was so excited to see my friend. This was exactly what I needed. Billy’s face popped up in my mind’s eye and a wicked little voice piped up saying, no, he’s exactly what you need.
No, I shut that voice down. Or at least I tried.
CHAPTER 9
Billy
I unlocked the door to Southern Comfort and stomped inside, welcoming the dark interior of the bar. There were still several hours till I usually showed up, but I couldn’t stand the thought of killing the afternoon in solitude, and I’d had enough of my brothers’ company for the time being. I had too much to process.
My little brother was right, today had been a real mindfuck.
I’d been so sure of myself, sitting at Hank’s kitchen table and spouting off to him and Jimmy. Then, as soon as I’d climbed back in my truck, thoughts began to pick at me like annoying flies buzzing around in my head.
I was used to living a life that was easy, and predictable. I might have enjoyed variety in the company I kept, but even in that there was consistency. I thrived off routine and familiarity.
Brenda, a woman I’d “dated”—and I used the term very loosely—was studying to be a grief counselor, and she’d told me that my penchant for living a groundhog-day-like lifestyle was a by-product of the trauma of losing my mother at such a young age and having an unstable home life after that.
I’d let most of her diagnosis and psychobabble go in one ear and out the other. But that one had stuck. There was definitely some gravy to what she was serving. I couldn’t argue that I’d created a life where my days were basically on replay.
But now, everything was different.
Pop was really gone. I’d thought I was prepared to lose him. Hell I’d written him off and come to terms with living without a father before I’d had hair on my balls.
So it was surprising how strange it was to live in a world where the old man wasn’t around. It’s not that we were close, far from it. But he had always been there, in the background. He’d been a constant in my life. A constant pain in the ass, sure. But still a constant.
And Cheyenne was back. Logic would say that Shadow was pretty much a stranger to me, now. After all, we hadn’t seen each other since we were so little that I hadn’t even recognized her at first.
But my heart wasn’t listening to logic. Not one bit. The minute I’d found out who she was, it’s like I hadn’t missed an emotional beat. She was my baby sister, the one who followed me around everywhere I went.
Now, as to what that meant for my life, or hers, for my brothers…I wasn’t sure. That would be a wait and see kind of a deal.
I breathed in deep. Yeah. That’s what I needed to do, just let the future play out, see where it took us.
Something inside me told me that there was no way that was going to happen. I tended to try and control things, something else Brenda had attributed to my childhood.
But, truth be told, it wasn’t just thoughts of Pop or Cheyenne that were making me jumpy as hell.
It was the lady lawyer.
Damn!
That woman was sex
in a pencil skirt.
She hadn’t thrown herself at me like most women did. When it came down to it, she’d seemed just plain annoyed with me, more than anything.
But hell, if I was analyzing shit, I’d have to admit that might’ve been part of her appeal. The thrill of the chase was real, and it was something that I didn’t experience very often. Maybe having to do a little seducing would be fun, for a change.
Still, even the thought of workin’ for the lady lawyer’s attention was not enough to shake the dark cloud that had been hanging over me all day. Something else was goin’ on. I just wasn’t sure how to fix it.
“Hey, Billy. You’re here early.” The observation came from my best friend Cash, who bartended here at Southern Comfort, as he stepped through the swinging doors that led to the keg room.
I shrugged. “Just thought I’d get a jump on things before we open.”
“Things? What things?”
“It’s my bar. Do I need a reason to be here?” I snapped and immediately regretted it.
He stopped in his tracks and a crease appeared in his forehead. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothin’.”
He shot me a concerned look, which was probably warranted.
Cash had been bartending here as long as I’d been runnin’ the place, and we’d grown up together. He knew me just about as well as it was possible to know another person. Just like with my brothers it was pointless to try and bullshit my way out of this. Plus, it might be good to talk to someone who didn’t have Comfort blood running through them.
“Sorry. I’m just a little out of sorts after the will reading.”
Cash’s face lost color. He mumbled, “Oh, shit. Yeah. Yeah, of course. Sorry, man. I forgot that was today.”
I shook my head. “No worries. I just figured I’d come by and do some inventory to get my mind off of things.”
“How did it go?” He spoke quietly but firmly. His tone made it clear that he wasn’t gonna be chased off by my mood—if I needed to spill my guts, he was gonna be there to catch ’em. A good friend.
“Hank gets the house. And the bar’s getting split up equally between us.”
“Equally?” Cash’s head tilted to the side. “But there’s three of you.”
“No, there’s four of us.” I knew I could’ve just come right out and said that Cheyenne was back but for some reason I wanted to see if Cash remembered her. Since Cheyenne was my shadow, and Cash and I were always together, the three of us were basically the Three Amigos. He’d been in the kitchen the day my grandparents took her away, but we’d never talked about it.
It took him a minute, but then his eyes widened and his jaw dropped open. “Holy shit. Shadow?!”
“Yep.” I nodded. “Cheyenne.”
“Cheyenne.” He spoke her name reverently as he shook his head back and forth. “I haven’t thought about her in…years. Are you going to try and find her?”
“Nope.” Now I was the one shaking my head.
“You’re not?” His face scrunched in confusion.
“Don’t have to. She’s here.”
“Here? In Firefly?”
“Yep.”
“Have you seen her?”
“She was at the will reading. I didn’t recognize her at first,” I admitted, but omitted part of the reason for my lack of recognition was a woman that had me tied up in more knots than my headphone wires after being loose in the bottom of my gym bag for a week.
“You didn’t?”
“No.” I felt like the world’s biggest asshole for not knowing my own sister, but it was what it was. “She’s not the same little girl in pigtails. She’s an adult.”
“How is she? Where’s she been? What is she doing now?”
I had the same questions, but unfortunately I still had no answers to any of them. “She seemed fine, but we didn’t really get a chance to talk. She’s coming by here tonight, though.”
“Fuck.” His tone was one of disbelief. “That’s crazy.”
My friend had summed it up perfectly. It was crazy.
We worked in silence prepping the bar. That was the nice thing about having a friend like Cash, someone who’d been there through thick and thin, had seen you at both your best and your worst. Who knew you better, in a lot of ways, than you knew yourself. He knew when you needed to talk and when you needed to be left alone with your thoughts.
And right now, those thoughts kept circling back to a dark-haired, blue-eyed, lady lawyer. And since I didn’t really understand what that meant or why it was happening, she wasn’t a topic I felt like discussing.
CHAPTER 10
Reagan
“Let’s take the trolley.” I stopped beside the red and white pole with the Trolley Pickup sign on top of it.
Nadia cringed. Her honey-blonde hair shimmered in the sun as she turned her head from side to side, looking around with a sheepish expression on her face. “It’s sort of a touristy thing.”
“I’m sort of a tourist.” I shrugged, an uncharacteristically carefree smile on my face.
I’d seen the trollies driving by since I’d arrived in Firefly and I’d been dying to ride one. I hadn’t had the chance yet since the boarding house where I was staying was only a block away from the law firm. But since Nadia and I were headed downtown, I figured that this was the perfect opportunity.
“It will take us fifteen minutes to get there if we take that. It goes all the way down by the pier. If we walk we can be there in five.”
As a New Yorker, my first instinct would always be to walk. But I’d been dying to see some of the island since I got here and what better way to do that than with your friend on a trolley.
“Come on, it will be fun. And right now, I need fun.” A niggle of guilt crept up in my chest at playing the I-just-got-cheated-on card when truth be told, I wasn’t all that devastated.
A resigned expression crossed her face before she pointed her finger and poked me in the shoulder, sighing and speaking in a serious tone, “Okay, but you owe me.”
“Well, since you still owe me for keeping your parents out of our dorm so you could sneak Derek Big Dick Hines out of the room, I’d say we’re even now.”
A twinkle lit in her brown eyes as her head fell back and a chuckle bubbled up. “Wow, I haven’t thought about that in forever! Ah, Derek,” she said with a sigh, this time it was of the swooning variety. “He really did live up to that name. All right, fine. We’re even.”
I’d just finished purchasing the tokens for our trip when the bell on the trolley sounded as it came around the corner.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Nadia mumbled under her breath as she boarded the trolley. Once she was seated she slumped down, the top of her head barely visible above the wood-planked bench. I smiled to myself and gripped the handle as I stepped onto the running board and lowered down beside her.
In college, Nadia was the free spirit in our group. She was wild, and would try anything. Nothing embarrassed her. She was the one that had talked me into doing the panty-run.
She was the one who’d signed us up to be figure models for drawing class and then didn’t bat an eye when we got there and it was explained to us that we would be nude. I’d bowed out. She’d robed up, and then disrobed proudly. And went back at least a half dozen times because it paid a hundred dollars a session.
In the four years we’d been roomies, she’d talked a lot about how she was a different person in college than she’d been growing up in Firefly. I never quite understood what she was talking about. But seeing the evidence of how embarrassed she was now was fascinating. Especially since we were the only two passengers, which made sense considering it was a weekday afternoon, which I assumed would not be peak tourist times.
“Hello, ladies!” A man wearing a conductor hat, white button-up shirt, black bow tie, and red suspenders standing at the front of the trolley spoke into a handheld PA mic. “Welcome to Firefly Island Trolley Tours—”
“Stew,” Nadia lifted
her hand. “Save your breath. You don’t have to do the whole spiel.”
“I’m Stewart.” As the trolley began to move, he continued on as if she hadn’t said a word. “I’ll be your guide today. First off, let me ask, where are you lovely ladies from?”
“Seriously, Stewie? I sat behind you in first grade when you peed your pants in front of the whole class. You popped a boner when we slow danced at the seventh grade formal. You puked in my parents’ flowerbed after homecoming senior year.”
Unlike Nadia’s embarrassment about riding the trolley, Stewie didn’t seem the slightest bit ashamed about the not-so-flattering history Nadia had just shared. He didn’t even break character as he exclaimed, “A hometown girl! And what about you?”
“I’m from New York.”
“Ahh, yes, the Big Apple, the city that never sleeps, Gotham,” he said in what I could only assume was his Batman impression. “Well, now. Firefly Island may not have Times Square but we do have Abernathy Manor.”
“Abernathy?” My gaze cut to Nadia. “Is that…?”
“Jennings Abernathy’s great grandparents’ estate,” she confirmed.
Jennings Abernathy was my boss and senior partner at Abernathy & Associates. I’d yet to meet him face to face, but I’d spoken to him during my Skype interview.
Leaves draped above us as we turned down a long driveway tunneled by mature oaks. My jaw dropped when I saw the massive colonial style home, complete with large white columns at the end of the drive.
“Abernathy Manor has been featured on over a dozen paranormal television shows, most recently on Syfy’s Ghost Hunters. Legend has it that Lucille Abernathy was madly in love with, and engaged to be married to, a longshoreman who was beneath her station. She chose him over her family, giving up her wealth and inheritance and was disowned.
“And that was just the beginning of Lucille’s heartaches. After she was shunned, Lucille’s beloved called off their union and married a maid that worked for the Abernathys. Lucille tried to return to her family home but was turned away.
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