He reached for her hand. “But you can’t appreciate the sugar until you let go of all the bad shit.” He brushed his thumb across the inside of her wrist and the hair on her arms tingled. “What your parents did didn’t have anything to do with you. You were a kid. Just like my wife screwing my buddy didn’t have anything to do with me. Not really. If she was unhappy because I was gone, there were other, more honorable ways to handle it. If your mama had been unhappy because your daddy was having affairs, there were other ways to handle that too. What my wife did wasn’t my fault. Just like what your mama did wasn’t your fault. I don’t know about you, Meg, but I don’t plan on paying the rest of my life for other people’s dumb-ass mistakes.”
“I don’t want to.”
He squeezed her hand and somehow she felt it in her heart. “Then don’t.” He pulled her toward him and placed his free hand on the side of her neck. “One thing I know for sure is that you can’t control what other people say and do.”
“You sound like Mick. He thinks I can’t get over the past because I dwell on it.” She turned her face into his palm.
“Maybe you need something in your life to take your mind off the past.”
When she’d been married to Travis’s daddy, she hadn’t let it bother her as much as it did these days.
“Maybe you need someone.”
“I have Travis.”
“Besides your son.” He lowered his face and spoke against her lips. “You’re a beautiful woman, Meg. You should have a man in your life.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but she couldn’t remember what to say. It had been a very long time since a man had told her she was beautiful. A long time since she’d kissed anyone but her son. She pressed her mouth against Steve’s and he kissed her. A warm gentle kiss that seemed to go on forever within the sunlight spilling into the kitchen. And when it was over, he cupped her face in his rough hands and said, “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”
Meg licked her bottom lip and smiled. He made her feel beautiful and wanted. Like more than just a waitress, a mom, and a woman who’d just hit forty. “How old are you, Steve?”
“Thirty-four.”
“I’m six years older than you.”
“Is that a problem?”
She shook her head. “No, but it might be a problem for you.”
“Age is not a problem.” He slid his hands to her back and pulled her against his chest. “I just have to figure out a way to tell Mick that I want his sister.”
Meg smiled and wrapped her arms around his neck. She knew there were a lot of things Mick kept to himself. Most recently his relationship with Maddie Jones. “Let him figure it out on his own.”
Chapter 17
Maddie lay curled up in bed. She didn’t have the energy to get up. She was drained and empty except for the ball of regret sitting in her stomach. She regretted not telling Mick sooner. If she’d told him who she really was the first night she’d walked into Mort’s, he never would have shown up at her door with mousetraps and catnip. He never would have touched her and kissed her, and she never would have fallen in love with him.
Snowball climbed onto the bed and picked her way across the quilt toward Maddie’s face.
“What are you doing?” she asked her kitten, her voice raw from the emotion she’d expended all night. “You know I don’t like cat hair. This is completely against the rules.”
Snowball crawled beneath the covers, then stuck her head back out just beneath Maddie’s chin. Her soft fur tickled Maddie’s throat. “Meow.”
“You’re right. Who gives a shit about the rules?” She stroked the cat’s fur as her eyes filled with tears. She’d cried so much the night before, she was surprised she had any water left in her body, that she wasn’t all dehydrated and wrinkled like a raisin.
Maddie rolled to her back and looked up at the shadows spread across her ceiling. She could have lived her entire life quite happy if she’d never fallen in love. She’d be happy to never know the high dopamine rush or the heart-wrenching anguish and despair of having loved and lost. Lord Tennyson was wrong. It was not better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Maddie would have much preferred to have never loved at all than to love Mick only to lose him.
I’m not hurt, he’d said.
I’m disgusted. She could take his anger and even the hate she’d seen in his eyes. But disgust? That hurt to the core. The man she loved, the man who’d not only touched her heart but her body, was disgusted by her. Knowing how he felt made her want to curl up in a ball and cover her head until it didn’t hurt anymore.
Around noon her back began to ache, so she grabbed her kitten and a quilt off her bed. She and Snowball lay on the couch and watched mindless television all day and into the evening. She even watched Kate & Leopold, a movie she’d always hated because she’d never understood why any sane woman would jump off a bridge for a man.
However, this time her dislike of the movie didn’t keep her from crying into a Kleenex. After Kate & Leopold, she watched Meerkat Manor and Project Runway reruns. When she wasn’t crying over Leopold, the poor Meerkats, or the abomination of Jeffrey’s rocker pants, she was thinking about Mick. What he’d said, his face when he’d said it, and what he’d told her about his father leaving his mother for Alice. Alice had been right about Loch’s feelings. Who would have thought it? Not Maddie, or rather she had thought of it, but given Alice’s history with men, especially married men, and Loch’s history with women, Maddie had dismissed the possibility.
Rose’s reasoning for what she’d done was a classic case of loss of control and the feeling of loss of self. The typical “if I can’t have you, no one can” that had been analyzed and studied and found throughout history.
It had been so simple, and right in front of her the whole time. Knowing the truth made writing the book easier, but on a personal level, it really didn’t change anything. Her mother had still made a bad choice that ended in her death. Three people died and three children were left devastated. Motive didn’t really matter a whole lot.
At around midnight she fell asleep and woke the next morning feeling as bad as ever. Maddie had never been a whiner or a crier. Most likely because she’d learned at an early age that whining and crying and feeling sorry for yourself didn’t get you anywhere. Even though she still felt like emotional roadkill, she took a shower and moved into her office. Lying around and feeling bad wasn’t going to get her work done. That was the thing about writing her books, she was the only one who could do it.
Her timeline was pinned to the wall and everything was ready. She sat down and began to write:
At three p.m. on July ninth, Alice Jones put on her white blouse and black skirt and sprayed Charlie on her wrists. It was the first day of her new job at Hennessy’s, and she wanted to make a good impression. Hennessy’s had been built in 1925 during Prohibition and the family had prospered by selling grain alcohol out of the back….
At around noon, Maddie got up to fix lunch, feed Snowball, and grab a Diet Coke. She wrote until midnight, when she fell into bed, and woke the next morning with Snowball under the covers and curled beneath her chin.
“This is a bad habit,” she told her cat. Snowball purred, a steady rattling of love, and Maddie couldn’t quite bring herself to kick the kitten out of bed.
During the next several weeks, Snowball developed other bad habits as well. She insisted on lying in Maddie’s lap while she wrote or walking on the desk and batting off paper clips, pens, and blocks of sticky notes.
Maddie kept herself busy, writing ten hours a day, taking occasional breaks out on her back deck to feel the sun on her face, before getting back to work until she fell into bed exhausted. During those moments when she wasn’t thinking about work, her mind always turned to Mick. She wondered what he was doing and who he was seeing. He’d said that he wasn’t going to think about her, and she believed him. If not thinking about the past was easy for him, not thinking about her woul
d be even easier.
On those occasions when her mind wasn’t filled with work, she recalled their conversations, their lunch at Redfish, and the nights he’d spent in her bed.
She wished she could hate Mick. Or even dislike him. It would be so much easier if she could. She’d tried to recall all the mean and nasty things he’d said the night she’d told him who she was, but she couldn’t hate Mick. She loved him and was fairly sure she’d love him forever.
On the anniversary of her mother’s death, she wondered if Mick was alone, remembering that night that had changed their lives. If he felt as alone and sad as she did. As the clock struck a minute after midnight, her heart sank as she realized she’d been holding on to a tiny shred of hope that he might show up on her porch. He didn’t, and she was forced to accept all over again that the man she loved didn’t love her.
The last day of August, she dressed in a pair of khaki shorts and a black cotton tank and took Snowball for her vet appointment. Leaving her kitten in the big hands of Dr. Tannasee was more traumatic than Maddie was willing to admit. She ignored the little burst of panic as she walked out of the examining room without the crazy-eyed, bucktoothed, rule-breaking ball of white fur, and she was forced to face an inconceivable fact. Somehow, Maddie had become a cat person.
When she returned home, the house seemed intolerably still and empty, and she forced herself to work for a few hours before moving out onto the deck to take a break in the fresh air and sunshine. She sat in an Adirondack chair and tilted her face to the sun. Next door, the Allegrezzas stood on their deck, laughing and talking and barbequing something.
“Maddie, come over and see the twins,” Lisa called out to her. She stood and took a quick inventory, but she didn’t spot a Hennessy. Her black flip-flops slapped the bottoms of her feet as she walked the short distance to the neighbors’.
Wrapped like burritos and lying in the same baby carriage shaded by a big ponderosa, Isabel and Lilly Allegrezza slept, oblivious to the fuss around them. The girls had dark glossy hair like their father and the most delicate faces Maddie had ever seen.
“Don’t they look like little porcelain dolls?” Lisa asked.
Maddie nodded. “They’re so tiny.”
“They both weigh a little more than five pounds now,” Delaney said. “They were early, but they’re perfectly healthy. If there was the slightest concern, Nick would have them at home in a germ-free bubble.” She looked over at her husband manning the grill with Louie. She lowered her voice and added, “He’s bought every gadget imaginable. The baby book calls that nesting.”
Lisa laughed. “Who would have thought he’d be a nester?”
“Are you talking about me?” Nick asked his wife.
Delaney looked over at the grill and smiled. “Just saying how much I love you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“When are you going back to work?” Lisa asked her sister-in-law.
“I’ll open the salon again next month.”
Maddie looked at Delaney and her smooth blond hair, cut straight across at her shoulders. “A hair salon?”
“Yeah. I own the salon on Main.” Delaney looked at Maddie’s hair and added, “If you need a trim before next month, let me know and I’ll bring over my shears. Whatever you do, don’t go to Helen’s Hair Hut. She’ll fry your hair and make you look like a bad eighties rock video. If you want your hair done right, come to me.”
Which explained why half the town had badly fried hair.
The back door opened and Pete and Travis walked out, each with a hot dog bun in his hand. They waited patiently as Louie slid a hot dog in each bun and Nick provided a stream of ketchup. Seeing Travis reminded Maddie of his uncle. She wondered where Mick was, and if he was likely to show up. If he did, would he be alone or have a woman on his arm who expected more from Mick than he would give? He’d said he loved her, but she didn’t believe him. As she’d learned all too painfully, love didn’t go away just because you didn’t want to think about it.
“Hey, Travis, how are you?” she asked as he moved toward her.
“Good. How’s your cat?”
“She’s at the vet’s today, so it’s fairly quiet around my house.”
“Oh.” He looked up at her and squinted against the glare of the sun. “I’m going to get a dog.”
“Oh.” She remembered what Meg had said about getting Travis a pet. “When?”
“Someday.” He took a bite of his hot dog and said, “I went fishing with my uncle Mick on his boat. We got skunked.” He swallowed, then added, “We drove by on the water and saw you. We didn’t wave, though.”
Of course not. She said her good-byes and went home. The house was still much too quiet, and she drove to Value Rite Drug to do a little nesting of her own. It was time Snowball got a proper pet carrier, and she planned to look for a better bed for the kitten. Obviously the Amazon box wasn’t a hit.
What Maddie hadn’t planned was to run smack-dab in the middle of the Founders Day celebration. She vaguely recalled seeing something about it somewhere, but she’d forgotten all about it. The trip to Value Rite Drug, which normally took about ten minutes, took half an hour. The parking lot was packed with cars from the Founders Day Arts and Crafts Fair held in the park across the street.
Maddie had to circle the parking lot like a vulture until she finally found a slot. Normally she wouldn’t have bothered, but she figured it would probably take her another half hour to get home anyway.
Once inside the store, she found a little cat bed but no carrier. She tossed it into her cart along with a catnip toy, and a cat DVD filled with footage of birds, fish, and mice. She was a bit embarrassed to find herself buying a DVD for a cat, but she figured Snowball might stay off the furniture if she was mesmerized by watching fish.
While at the store, she stocked up on toilet paper, laundry soap, and her most secret indulgence, the Weekly News of the Universe. She loved the stories of fifty-pound grasshoppers and about women who were having Big Foot’s baby, but her favorites were always the Elvis sightings. She dropped the black-and-white magazine into her cart and headed for the checkout lanes.
Carleen Dawson was working register five when Maddie set her items on the counter.
“I heard you’re Alice’s daughter. Or is that just a rumor like Brad Pitt comin’ to town?”
“No, that’s true. Alice Jones was my mother.” Maddie dug around in her purse and pulled out her wallet.
“I worked with Alice at Hennessy’s.”
“Yes, I know,” she said and braced herself for what Carleen might say next.
“She was a nice girl. I liked her.”
Surprise curved Maddie’s lips into a smile. “Thank you.”
Carleen rung up everything and put it all, ex cept the bed, into a bag. “She shouldn’t have been fooling around with a married man, but she didn’t deserve what Rose did to her.”
Maddie swiped her card and entered her PIN number. “I obviously agree.” She paid for her items and walked out of Value Rite feeling a lot better than when she’d walked in. She put everything in the trunk of her car and decided that since she was there, she’d check out the arts and crafts fair. She put her big black sunglasses on the bridge of her nose as she crossed the street and entered the park. She’d never been into arts and crafts, mostly because she didn’t really decorate.
At the Pronto Pup stand, she splurged on a corn dog with extra mustard. She saw Meg and Travis with a tall bald man wearing a sparrow is my co-pirate T-shirt. She noticed right away that Mick wasn’t with them, and she waited for them to pass before she moved to the PAWS booth and looked at pet collars, pet clothes, and feeders. The pink princess cat ottoman was over the top, but she did find a carrier in the shape of a bowling bag. It was red with black mesh hearts and lined in black fur. It also came with a matching wristlet for pet treats. She ordered Snowball a three-story kitty condo and an electronic litter box, to be delivered the following week. The carrier she took with her so that she could bri
ng Snowball home in it the next day.
She hung the carrier on her shoulder and threw her corn dog stick away as she left the booth. As she hooked a right by the Mr. Pottery stand, she practically ran headfirst into Mick Hennessy’s chest. She looked up past the blue T-shirt covering his wide chest, past the throat she’d kissed so often, the stubborn set of his chin and angry press of his mouth, and up into his eyes covered by sunglasses. Her heart pounded and pinched, and heat flushed her body. Her first instinct was to run away from the anger rolling off him in waves. Instead she managed a very pleasant, “Hello, Mick.”
He frowned. “Maddie.”
Her gaze skimmed across his face, feeding images of him to the lonely places inside her, images of his black hair touching his brow and of the bruise on his cheek.
“What happened to your face?”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”
Panty-tossing Darla stood beside him and asked, “Are you going to introduce me to your friend?”
Until that moment, Maddie had not realized they were together. Darla’s big hair was as fried as ever, and she wore one of her sparkly tank tops and painfully tight jeans.
“Darla, this is Madeline Dupree, but her real name is Maddie Jones.”
“The writer?”
“Yes.” Maddie adjusted the cat carrier on her shoulder. What was Mick doing with Darla? Surely he could do better.
“J.W. told me that he heard you were trying to get the Hennessys and your mother exhumed.”
“Christ,” Mick swore.
Maddie glanced at Mick, then returned her gaze to Darla. “That’s not true. I would never do something like that.”
Mick pulled a wad of cash out of his front pocket and handed it to the other woman. “Why don’t you head over to the beer garden and I’ll meet you there in a minute?”
Darla took the money and asked, “Is Budweiser all right?”
“Fine.”
As soon as Darla walked away, Mick said, “How much longer are you going to be in town?”
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