by Rebeca Seitz
Harry’s voice had faded into the background of restaurant chatter as Tandy’s mind flew back to the seven years she spent living in a box with her mother. Before she met Marian and Jack Sinclair. Hearing the trains rumble past where they camped. Begging people for money. Searching for a dry place when it rained, for a piece of food that hadn’t already been discovered by bugs. Watching her mom bob and weave as she walked, that scary light in her eyes that was both mesmerizing and terrifying because it meant Mom wouldn’t make sense.
Tandy knew now her childhood had been stolen the first day her mother lit a match beneath the bowl of a pipe.
“Stupid junkie. Probably lost his job because of some drug habit.” Harry’s voice joined a thousand other voices that still kept her awake on too many nights. “Bet he chooses to live like that. Easier than getting a job and working for his money like the rest of us.”
Tandy looked at Harry sitting there in his three-thousand-dollar pin-striped suit, black crocodile shoes, and platinum cuff links with the Brooks Brothers insignia. Thought about reminding him that his money came from his father’s hard work and planning but decided against it. Harry was, after all, a huge client.
“Oh, probably not, Harry. You’d be amazed what some of the people living on the streets have been through.” She sipped her water and willed her blood not to boil at the stupidity of the man before her.
He sneered and pointed a stubby finger at her. “Don’t be naïve, Tandy. That man could get a job flipping burgers at McDonald’s just as easy as sit out there with a cup in his hand, begging me to part with my cold hard cash that I worked very hard to get.”
Silence was about as possible as finding a pair of Ferragamos in a size ten. On sale. Never gonna happen.
“Harry, how would he get a job? I doubt he owns any clothing other than what’s on his back. What would he wear to a job interview? Where would he get enough sleep in one sitting to be awake for an entire shift? What address would he even put on his job application?”
“Why, Tandy, I didn’t know you cared so much about our fair city’s homeless degenerates.” His voice, so patronizing and smooth, grated. It fought with the pockmarks on his face to portray a polished image. “I’d think, with such convictions, you would have a hard time taking my case.”
“Why is that, Harry? You didn’t embezzle from Hope House. Which means you didn’t take money from the mouths of homeless people. Which means my awareness of the plight of the homeless works in your favor.” She took a sip of her water and tried to relax.
He wagged his finger at her. “Tsk, tsk, tsk, Tandy. There goes your naiveté again.”
It took her a second to catch on. “Excuse me?”
He grinned, and for the first time Tandy knew what jowls meant. “I think we both know what I’m saying.”
“I certainly hope not. Because if you’re confessing to taking money from a homeless shelter, I can’t put you on the stand. I’d be suborning perjury.”
Christopher cleared his throat, snapping Tandy back into the present. He swiveled around to face her. “I’m in a predicament, Tandy. Harry Simons brings a lot of money to this firm, been with us for years. That must count for something. Yet I find myself struggling with the thought of firing you since I understand the ethical dilemma you faced.”
A tiny smidgen of hope blossomed in her heart.
Christopher placed his palms down on his glass-topped desk, an act of finality. “And yet I see no course of action but to terminate your employment with Meyers, Briggs, and Stratton. Anything less would cause serious repercussions in our relationship with Harry Simons.”
She fought to breathe normally. Blinked to hold back tears. Her savings account was basically nonexistent, which meant she and Cooper better start looking for a big refrigerator box to call home. Or maybe finding Cooper another family to live with would be a better idea. One of the sisters could take him. Meg, or maybe Joy. Kendra would be a last resort. She was as good with pets as Tandy was with plants. Well, except for Kitty, but cats are self-sufficient.
A hawk slammed into the window, making Christopher jump and spill the coffee sitting on his desk. “Dadgum it! Anna!”
Anna came rushing in, saw the mess, and snagged a roll of paper towels from the cabinet by the door without a word.
“You’ve got to call somebody about these hawks, Anna. They’re ruining my concentration!”
“Yes, Mr. Beasley. I’ll make the call today.” Anna shot Tandy a sideways glance. Tandy grinned. Seeing the unflappable Christopher Beasley in a snit was worth getting fired— almost. Anna sopped up the mess and left the room.
“Now, where were we?” He pushed paper around the desk, checking to ensure all the coffee was gone.
Tandy cleared her throat. “I think you were firing me.”
Christopher stopped arranging paper and looked up at her. “Right, right. Well, I don’t think we have to be that drastic. How about a leave of absence?”
Thank heaven for hawks.
“A leave of absence, sir?” Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but, hey, it had to be asked.
“Yes. I think that will mollify our good friend Harry.” Christopher nodded and patted the desktop, warming to his idea. “I’ll let him know you’ve taken some time to think through your behavior and will come back to the firm when you’ve gotten some perspective. Say, two months?”
Two months? She calculated the amount in her checking account and began deducting bills. With no extracurricular spending at all, it might work. Two months to find something else or learn how to eat crow. Okay, maybe this was a good thing. There was no immediate need to take another boring job in a legal firm. Two months was a ton of time. Figuring out her professional passion should be a snap. She could almost see Meg’s eyes roll at that thought.
“Thank you for that, sir.”
Christopher smiled. “It’s the least we can do. You’ve been a good employee. I just wish this mess hadn’t occurred.”
Poor Christopher. Conflict between an employee and a major client. He must have been up all night figuring out ways to smooth ruffled feathers.
She shrugged. “These things happen for a reason, I think.” She stood up and held out her hand. Christopher took it with his own limp one and made a motion that might optimistically be called a handshake.
“Good luck, Tandy. We’ll see you back here in two months.”
“Thank you.” She turned on one Ferragamo heel and walked out of Christopher Beasley’s office. Eight weeks of nothingness spread out before her like a gift. There had to be a way to make money off of this.
She tapped her chin and watched the lights over the elevator. Maybe some tourist would want her apartment for a couple of weeks. Tourists would pay just about anything for somewhere to stay during season. A couple thousand bucks, easy.
But if someone were to stay in her apartment, where could she go? The whisper of her heart tickled Tandy’s brain. Stars Hill, Tennessee’s rolling countryside, Daddy’s smile, Momma’s painted roses, the sisters’ scrapbooks …
The ding of the elevator dispelled her mind’s image but not the idea. Stars Hill. Well, it had been a while since she’d been back. Three years, if memory served. And with Daddy and the sisters around, there wouldn’t be any need to spend money on restaurants. Though what she’d save might be spent on scrapbook stuff. It was one thing to scrap alone and quite another to sit around Momma’s old scrapping table with the girls.
Tandy exited the elevator and smiled. If she left right now, she’d be home in Stars Hill by morning.
She walked into her office, snagged her briefcase, and whipped out a tiny cell phone on the way back to the elevator.
“Hello?”
“Meg?”
“Hey, T, what’s up in the big city?”
Tandy laughed. “Well, not me. I’ve got eight weeks of sudden vacation.”
“What? What happened?”
“I’ll tell you all about it when I get there.”
Me
g’s squeal pierced Tandy’s ears, and she jerked the phone away from her head. “You’re coming home? To Stars Hill? Yes!! When will you be here? Wait, what happened? Did you get fired? Did something happen at work?” Tandy could hear Meg’s three kids squealing now in the background. They must have caught on to their mom’s excitement.
“Seriously, I’ll tell you when I get there. Call Kendra and Joy. Breakfast at Joy’s, nine a.m.”
“You’ve got it, sister. James, get down off that table!” Tandy could just picture Meg’s eldest. He must have grown a foot by now. “I’m telling you that child will climb on anything,” Meg said.
“Go keep your kids from tearing down the house. I’ve got to get home, get all my scrapping stuff packed, call the rental company to let some crazy tourist in my place for a couple of weeks, and get on the highway.”
“On the road again …” Meg’s voice blared through the phone.
“Sheesh, Sis, are you ever going to stop with the songs?”
“Not as long as there’s a breath in me.” Tandy heard scuffling. “James, put your sister down! I am not kidding with you, mister!”
Tandy chuckled. “See you in the morning.”
“Okay. Be careful and buckle up.”
“You’ve got it.”
Tandy snapped the phone closed and walked through the parking deck toward her new silver BMW 323. Man was this car going to stand out in sleepy little Stars Hill.
Two
It’s okay, boy,” Tandy comforted Cooper as he whined from the backseat. “I’m sure an exit will be coming up soon.” She sighed as her headlights shone on a beautiful green sign declaring Valdosta, Georgia’s exit two miles ahead. Cooper whined again.
“Seriously, Coop, we’re almost there.” Leave it to her to pick the only dog in the universe with a bladder the size of a kidney bean. She punched the radio dial, cutting Terry Gross off in mid-sentence. No worries—the Middle East would still be falling apart when Cooper finished his business. If she made it to the exit in time.
She tapped a little harder on the gas.
“Just think, Coop—” she spoke over whining that was increasing not only in volume but also in pitch—“in seven more hours you’ll be running all over the place and making sure Kitty knows exactly who’s boss.” Cooper growled at the mention of his archnemesis.
Tandy chuckled as she swerved onto the off-ramp. “Now don’t get any ideas, mister. We will have no repeats of our last visit to Stars Hill. Got it?” She swung into a parking space at the closest gas station and jumped out of the car, barely managing to snap Cooper’s leash on before he pulled her across the parking lot to the nearest patch of green.
As she positioned herself upwind, Tandy continued laying down the law. “I’m not kidding with you. If you hurt Kitty again, Kendra won’t let you come over anymore. And then who will make you weird homemade doggie treats?” Cooper finished his task and woofed at her. “Good, so we’re clear on this?”
He woofed again and she nodded, satisfied that had been a sound of agreement rather than argument. They crossed the grass, heading back toward the car when the first notes of Kelly Clarkson’s “Miss Independent” chorus sounded from her cell phone. She fished around in her pocket and pulled out the phone, making a mental note to change the ringtone before Daddy heard it and launched into a sermon about depending only on God.
“Hello?”
“So I have to hear from Meg that you’re coming home? Why does she get to know everything first?”
“Hi, Kendra. And how are you this lovely evening?” She opened the car door and Cooper climbed in.
“Hi, yourself. Now why do I have to hear from Meg that you’re coming home?” The love in Kendra’s voice contradicted her mocking, stern tone. Tandy pictured Kendra’s beautiful smile—the one that made heads turn and stopped men in their tracks—as she slid into her own seat.
“You have to hear it from Meg because I didn’t tell Joy yet.” She laughed as Kendra’s melodic sounds of happiness crossed the phone lines.
“Yeah, whatever, like you’d tell the baby anything.”
“Are you still calling her that to her face?”
“Every chance I get. Somebody’s got to keep her off that pedestal she’s so intent on inhabiting.”
“You know as well as I do that Daddy put her up on that pedestal, and it’ll take a strong man to either keep her there or knock her off.”
“Don’t I know it. Poor Scott’s got his work cut out for him. I told him that at the wedding. So, spill. What’s chasing you out of the Sunshine State?”
“Hang on, I’ve gotta shift.” She put the phone on her lap and navigated her way back onto the interstate. “Now, what makes you think I’m running?”
“Joy’s the baby. Meg’s the steady one. You’re the runner. Always have been. Now tell me what spooked you.”
“Nothing spooked me.” She fought the desire to be defensive. That would only confirm Kendra’s accusation.
“Mm-hmm. You just up and decided it was a good time to drive eleven hours north and stop in at the happening town of Stars Hill. Last I checked, I still had a working brain between my two ears.”
“Silly me, I’d have thought you transferred it to a canvas by now.”
“I’m on to sculptures.”
“What?”
“I put down the brushes and picked up the clay. I’ve been sculpting for a little while in between writing gigs.”
“Since when?”
“Since the phone call I got from you three weeks ago.”
“Sorry. You know I call as often as I can.”
“More like often as you remember to, but don’t sweat it. I know you’re busy. If I had something important to say, I’d call you. But, since I live in Stars Hill and you live in the sunniest place in the country, I just wait for Big City Sister to call me.”
Tandy laughed. “Yeah, well, Big City Sister needs a break.”
“Ah, we finally get to it. The reason for the run.”
“I’m not running, Kendra.”
“Okay, how about you tell me what you’re not running from, and we just call it a fast trot?”
Tandy sighed. Kendra was like a dog with a bone. No stopping her once she’d dug her teeth in. “I sort of had an altercation with a client.”
“I see you’ve lapsed into lawyer-speak. Details, girl. I need details. Are we talking send-a-gift-certificate-and-anice-box-of-Godiva altercation or contemplate-my-futurein-another-country altercation?”
“Somewhere in between.”
“Closer to Godiva or relocation?”
“Oh, probably right there in the middle.”
“My patience for word pictures is wearing thin. I’ve got clay drying in front of me, and you’re stalling, which means you’ve got something to stall about. What’s up?”
Tandy told her the whole story—from Harry’s idiocy and guilt to Christopher’s idea of a vacation.
“I guess I wouldn’t have done much different,” Kendra said when Tandy was finished. “Well, that’s not true. We all know I’d have taken that man down a peg or two, and he might still be talking in a falsetto today.”
“Then I wish you’d been there.”
“Me, too. So, that still doesn’t explain why you’re coming to Stars Hill. Or have you had too much of the beach to just go wait this thing out while the waves roll in and the seagulls soar overhead?”
“I think … I just wanted some home time, you know?” Silence hummed over the phone line as Tandy struggled to come up with the words, or admit what was already in her mind. “Kendra, do you ever wonder if maybe you somehow got off course?”
“Off course of what?”
“Life.”
“There’s a course? Shoot, nobody told me there was a course.”
“I’m serious, Kendra.”
“I know you are, honey, but I don’t have much of an answer for you. Kitty and I pretty much take it day by day.”
“Speaking of which, I have duly inform
ed Cooper not to mess with Kitty.”
“You tell that mangy mutt he won’t be getting any more chicken-flavored biscuits from me if he so much as looks sideways at Her Highness.”
“He is not a mangy mutt. He’s purebred basset hound.”
“Mm-hmm. Like I said.”
“Just because your brain’s wires are crossed to make you think cats are better than dogs doesn’t mean my Cooper isn’t a lovely specimen of canine perfection.”
“Do you think lightning can strike through a cell phone?”
“Ha ha, very funny. I’m hanging up now.”
“You buckled up?”
“As always.”
“See you in the morning.”
“You bet. Go warn Kitty.”
“Already on it.”
Tandy snapped the phone shut and hit the volume button on the steering wheel in time to hear Terry Gross giving the closing credits for Fresh Air. She hit the scan button and listened as snatches of Air Supply followed Garth Brooks, who came before Beethoven. Radio—such a marvelous invention.
Six and a half hours to Stars Hill, Tennessee. Wonder if Meg told Daddy she was coming? Probably. Knowing Meg, there’d be a welcome banner stretched across Lindell Street and a “welcome home” sign in every business window. She pictured James working on it right now, paper stretched out across Meg’s huge kitchen. Joy had probably planned an extensive breakfast complete with eggs Benedict, omelets, Belgian waffles, French toast, fresh coffee, and mixed juices, the news of which was likely already circulating through town. Residents were keeping phone lines hot over what Suzanne said Pamela said Ms. McMurty saw Joy buy at the grocery store. Petra, Suzanne’s neighbor and Meg’s friend, would end up calling Meg to get all the details and pass the info on down the line right back to Ms. McMurty.
If Stars Hill could do anything, it was keep track of its people.
Tandy shifted in her seat. There’s something she hadn’t missed. Everyone knowing her business. As soon as that sign went up across Lindell, folks would probably start telling stories of how she’d failed in the city and was coming home with her tail between her legs. Of how disappointed their momma would be if she were alive to see Tandy come home in defeat. Others would chime in with ruminations of a sickness in the family that brought her running back. They’d all have a story. Stars Hill loved stories. They were a supportive bunch if the situation warranted and they knew the facts, but that meant telling the facts.