So that’s it? That’s all he said?” Jamie asked over dinner that night. Without anyone making a conscious effort to organize group meals, the four housemates had fallen into a rotation of cooking and cleanup. They ate dinner together almost every night and kept the common areas presentable, and each gave Brooke a generous weekly “rent check” to help defray the remodeling expenses.
“Yeah, and it was bizarre, because he’d just told me, literally two minutes prior, that he’d already prepped for class.” Caitlin picked up her fork and prodded her portion of Brooke’s homemade cornbread and chili.
“He’s up to something super shady,” Jamie declared.
“You don’t know that,” Anna said. “Being BFF with his FedEx guy isn’t exactly damning proof of wrongdoing.”
“Yeah, but who summons the FedEx guy in the middle of the night? Multiple times? And then there’s the locked door in his house.” Cait put down her fork and sighed.
“Eat,” Brooke commanded. “Here, have some more butter.”
Cait slugged back her ice water and waved away the butter dish. “One thing’s for sure, I’m done dating English professors.”
Anna grinned. “You say that every time, but we all know the truth: Well-read men are your drug of choice.”
“He’s so funny and nice and smoking hot!” The water glasses rattled as Cait pounded the table. “Why does there always have to be a catch?”
“Maybe he’s a drug dealer,” Jamie suggested.
“Maybe he’s an arms smuggler,” Brooke said.
“Ooh, I know,” Anna said. “Maybe, behind the locked door, he’s stockpiling the corpses of all his ex-girlfriends.”
“And shipping them off via FedEx at three a.m.?” Jamie snorted.
“You guys, this is serious.” Cait dropped her forehead into her hands. “I really like him.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Anna said. “Maybe there’s a reasonable explanation for all of this. Something you’ll joke about at your fiftieth wedding anniversary.”
“Yeah, we’ll pop the champagne and laugh and laugh about all that weapons trafficking.”
“Don’t forget the dead bodies,” Jamie added helpfully.
Anna tapped her fork against the rim of her plate. “Okay, well, what about this? Maybe he’s selling off internal organs to pay off gambling debts. You know, a spare kidney here, half a liver there.”
Cait lifted her head. “I thought you were the one claiming there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.”
Anna shrugged. “I said ‘maybe.’”
“Look on the bright side,” Brooke urged. “At least you didn’t sleep with him yet.”
Cait buried her face in her hands again. “Yeah. About that …”
Brooke gasped. “What?!?”
Anna shoved aside her plate. “When did this happen?”
“About six hours ago.” Cait’s voice was muffled. “In his office.”
“You vixen!” Jamie hesitated only a fraction of a second before deciding that yes, the question really needed to be asked: “So? How was it?”
“Heart-stopping. Toe-curling. Mind-blowing.” Cait let out a whimper of despair. “Damn it!”
“Well, look at the bright side.” Brooke tried again. “At least you got to have your way with him before you figured out he was shysty and callous.”
Anna patted Brooke’s hand. “Still haven’t heard from hardware store hunk?”
“No. And I never will. He wasn’t that hunky anyway.” She took a huge bite of biscuit. “Ugh, I’m such a liar. He was sex in a flannel shirt. What was I thinking, asking him out? I’m sure he already has a girlfriend who looks like Adriana Lima. And another one who looks like Gisele Bündchen. He probably has a whole harem of supermodels.”
Anna laughed. “In the Adirondacks?”
“No one works a parka and a pair of snowshoes like Gisele.”
Jamie looked around the table at her friends: Cait’s Gibson Girl profile and long auburn hair, Brooke’s delicate blond beauty, Anna’s sparkling eyes and adorable apple cheeks. “What the hell, you guys? This is absurd. We’re bold, brilliant, beautiful babes who’ve been overqualified for every job we’ve ever had. How can we all be having man problems?”
“Anna doesn’t have man problems,” Brooke said.
“Au contraire,” Anna muttered.
Jamie ignored this nitpicky side argument. “Honestly, look at us. We’re total catches. We should be fighting them off with our nail files.”
“Maybe we’re cursed,” Cait suggested. “Maybe we need to make an offering.”
Anna leaned forward, looking intrigued. “To whom?”
“Mr. Wonderful,” Cait said. They all tipped back their chairs to glance down the hall toward the staircase.
“What do you think a metal winged statue would want?” Brooke asked.
“A metal winged Barbie to keep him company,” Cait suggested.
“I’ll weld one for him,” Brooke said. “Right after I finish replacing the wiring in the dining room.”
“You guys are ridiculous.” Jamie said. “Nobody’s cursed.”
“Then how do you explain the bad luck?”
“We’re just …” Jamie thought about everything that had happened in the past few months, about Arden and the inheritance check in the shredder and the wedding she was supposed to be planning. “Experiencing a burst of a karmic static. It’s not bad luck; none of this is random. We’re back together, living here in Henley House again. What are the odds? There’s got to be a reason for all this.”
Brooke gaped at her. “Do my ears deceive me, or did Jamie Burton actually use the word ‘karma’?”
“I think living in L.A. has gone to your head,” Anna said.
“Mock me if you must, but you’ll see,” Jamie told them. “I sense a great disturbance in the force.”
Cait rolled her eyes. “Now you sound like Gavin.”
Jamie, Brooke, and Anna waited for her to elaborate.
Big, drawn-out sigh. “I think he has a secret sci-fi habit, on top of everything else.”
“No!” Anna clutched at her heart. “You knew this and you still had sex with him?”
“She can’t help it,” Jamie said. “The better the sex, the worse the judgment. I’ve been there.”
“Well, how exactly are we supposed to restore karmic harmony and balance and all that?” Brooke folded her napkin and pushed back her chair. “I’m fed up with renovating. I’m ready for results.”
“All in due time,” Jamie assured them with typical bravado. “Wait for a sign.”
“What kind of sign?” Anna asked.
Jamie gave them a Cheshire cat smile. “I’ll know it when I see it.”
Duck!”
When Brooke shoved her, Jamie stumbled off the sidewalk and into the path of oncoming traffic.
A mud-splattered pickup truck veered around her, beeping its horn and drenching her with a sheet of last night’s rainfall that had collected in the gutter.
Jamie wiped off her face with her coat sleeve and started picking wet leaves out of her hair. “You know, if you want me dead, you don’t have to try to make it look like an accident. Just give me a few cartons of cigarettes and I’ll take it from there.”
“Get down!” Brooke seized her wrist and yanked her into the doorway of the town’s used-book store. “Jeff Thuesen is over there!”
Jamie’s whole body went rigid. “Where?”
“There!” Brooke risked a quick glance back toward the street. “He’s walking this way.”
Jamie flattened herself back against the wall until she felt the uneven grooves of brick and mortar digging into her head. “What the hell is Arden’s ex doing in Thurwell?”
“How should I know? Oh my gosh, here he comes.” Brooke implored her with desperate blue eyes. “What now?”
“I don’t know.” Jamie curled her fingers against the brick, scrabbling for a firm handhold. Was it possible for a fast-living thirty-two-year-o
ld to suffer a stress-induced heart attack?
“You always know what to do!” Brooke said. “Hurry! Unleash hell! Be mean!”
“I—” Jamie gazed helplessly back at Brooke for a minute. Then she caught a blur of movement in the corner of her vision, and raw panic took over. She wrenched out of Brooke’s grasp and darted into the bookstore, where she cowered in the children’s section until Brooke came looking for her a few minutes later.
“Are you all right?” Brooke’s complexion was ashen. “What happened to you out there?”
Jamie peeked over the cover of Frog and Toad Are Friends. “Don’t worry about me. The more important question is, what happened to you?”
Brooke planted both hands on her hips and went into full rant mode. “I’ll tell you exactly what happened. That sorry excuse for a man had the unmitigated gall to come right up and say hello, and I just turned up my nose.” Her face shone with triumph. “I gave him the cut direct.”
“The cut direct,” Jamie marveled. “The ton will be scandalized.”
“Don’t make fun of me. You know I have a hard time with confrontation. But he deserved it, the jackass.” Brooke scowled. “I hate him.”
“Well, I’m sure he got the message.”
“But he didn’t! Instead of having the common decency to turn tail and slink away, he started following me and asked about you!”
Jamie’s heart rate kicked back up into cardiac-arrest mode. “What did he say?”
“He said he heard you were in town and he wants to talk to you.”
“Oh my God.”
“I know! Ooh, my blood is just boiling!”
“So, um, what did you say?”
“Not a word.” Brooke smirked. “I just whipped out a pen and wrote down your cell phone number for him.”
“What?” Jamie waved Frog and Toad wildly. “Why?”
“Because you actually say all the clever retorts that other people only think of three days after they’ve finished the argument. I hope he calls you tonight at dinner, so we can all hear you give him a verbal flaying.”
“This is not good,” Jamie said faintly.
“First Arden’s memorial service, now this.” Brooke fumed. “He doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.”
Neither do you. Jamie sank down into a worn blue beanbag next to the child-sized reading tables.
“Jamie?” Brooke’s worried face hovered above her.
Jamie turned her face into the slightly sticky blue vinyl.
The beanbag rustled as Brooke settled in next to her. “Jamie.”
“I’m fine. Just leave me alone.”
“You’re not fine, and I will not leave you alone.” Brooke paused. “I know something happened between you and Arden. And Jeff, apparently.”
“Brooke, please just—”
“That’s why you won’t cash your check or call Arden’s lawyer back. You’re feeling guilty about something, and I think I know what.”
“No, you don’t. Trust me.”
“You slept with Jeff, didn’t you?”
Jamie whipped her head around to stare at Brooke. “What?”
“That’s why he and Arden broke up.” Brooke nodded, her hands clasped and her posture as regal as her current seating situation would permit. “Am I right? It’s okay; you can tell me.”
Jamie felt like she’d been punched in the throat. “That’s what you think of me? You think I’m the kind of woman who sluts it up with her friends’ boyfriends?”
“Well.” Brooke examined the crosshatch of scratches and scrapes on her hands. “How else do you explain the way you’ve been acting lately? The smoking, the hangdog looks, the malingering?”
Jamie let her head thunk back into the beanbag. “I would never do that to Arden. To any of you.”
“You always could get any guy you wanted,” Brooke said softly.
“Regardless of whether or not I could, I wouldn’t. I don’t have a lot of friends, Brooke. You guys are pretty much it. Men come and go, but …” She trailed off as a horrible thought occurred. “Have you talked to Cait and Jamie about this? Do they think I’m an amoral skeezer, too?”
“No one thinks you’re a skeezer.”
“That’s not an answer.” Jamie crossed her arms, surprised by how much it still stung to be cast as the token Jezebel amid a trio of good girls. She’d never blended in with the preppy Thurwell College elite, but when she was younger, her in-your-face sexuality had imbued her with a sense of power and authority. People noticed her, listened to her. But as she got older, she’d started to wonder if she’d ever be able to move beyond her brash party-girl persona.
“Well?” Jamie demanded with a hard edge in her voice. “Have you talked to Cait and Anna about this?”
“No.” Brooke remained calm and composed. “I’m talking to you about it. Because I love you and I’m worried about you.”
“How can you say that and in the same breath accuse me of breaking up Arden’s relationship with the guy she planned to marry?”
Brooke placed her hand on Jamie’s shoulder. “Everyone makes mistakes.”
“Well, I don’t make that kind of mistake.” Jamie stuck out her chin. “Not now, not ever.”
“All right, I believe you. But please, tell me what did happen between you and Arden?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
A pair of preschoolers wandered into the children’s book section, trailed by two mothers and a bookstore employee.
The employee took one look at the drama unfolding in the depths of the beanbag and cleared her throat. “Can I help you ladies find something?”
“No, thanks. We were just leaving.” Jamie got to her feet and hauled up Brooke behind her.
“Wait, don’t you want to check out the bridal magazines while you’re here?” asked Brooke. “Last week, you said you had to get caught up on all the current wedding trends.”
That was before Arden’s ex came back to haunt me. Jamie had been waiting for a sign, and the reappearance of Jeff Thuesen was like a big, flashing neon directive: Cease and desist. “No bridal magazines. No bridal anything. I think I’m going to have to cut and run on this wedding planner gig.”
Brooke gasped. “You can’t just quit!”
Jamie threw her bag over her shoulder and headed for the exit. “Watch me.”
“But it’s your dream job!”
“Not anymore.” She buttoned up her coat. “I’m going back to bartending. At least I’m good at that.”
“But one of my coworkers just got engaged and I gave her your number. She wants to hire you.”
“She can find someone else.”
“But what about that poor bride? You can’t back out now. You signed a contract!”
“Look, I tried, but it turns out my dream job? Not so dreamy.” Jamie opened the door and braced for a gust of cold, wet wind. “I’m glad the B and B is working out for you, but not all of us can be so lucky.”
Brooke stopped protesting and glanced back down at her battle-scarred fingers. “Yes. About that …”
“Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them.”
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden
I hate this house.” Brooke set aside her hammer and chisel and swiped at her sweat-drenched forehead with the clean washcloth Anna offered. “I wish I’d never bought it.”
“No, you don’t.” Anna crouched down on the tile bathroom floor next to her.
“Oh yes, I do. Paradise Found, my foot. This”—Brooke peered down into the jagged black hole where the toilet used to be—“is the ninth circle of hell.”
“That does look pretty hellacious,” Anna admitted. “Why are you messing with the toilet down here, anyway?”
Brooke sighed. “Because I have to replace it with one that doesn’t leak.”
“So now you’re a master plumber in addition to an expert electrician?” Anna whistled. “I’m impressed.”
“All I
wanted was chintz and scones,” Brooke said. “Mints on pillows and a leather-bound guest registry. I never planned to round out my education in the practical sciences.”
“This will all be over soon,” Anna said. “And then you can surround yourself with patchwork and popovers and never look back.” She paused, eyeing the contents of the toolbox strewn across the floor. “I’ve never replaced a toilet, but I was not aware that the job required a hammer and chisel.”
“It doesn’t, usually.” Brooke grimaced. “Unless, of course, the toilet in question happens to be bolted to a cracked flange.”
Anna regarded her blankly. “What’s a flange?”
“This thing right here.” Brooke pointed with her chisel to the blackened metal ring encircling the hole in the floor. “It’s cracked, so it has to be replaced. And it’s cast iron, which makes it practically impossible to remove. Hence the hammer and chisel. And the obscenities.”
“But it looks like you’re almost done,” Anna said hopefully.
“I’m almost done with the flange. But see that?” Brooke ran her fingers along the web of hairline cracks spreading out across the floor. “All that pounding on the flange took its toll. Now I have to replace this old tile, which I’ll have to pry off with a putty knife. And I have no idea what’s underneath the tile, but if it was installed wrong—and everything in this house was installed wrong—I’ll end up with a gaping hole in the floor. It never ends. I’m like Sisyphus with a sewer line. I’ve spent my entire weekend literally staring down the toilet and inuring myself to the stench.” She sat back against the shower door. “Makes me long for the good old days when all I had to worry about was the prospect of knob-and-tube wiring spontaneously combusting.”
“I still can’t believe how quickly you rewired this place. What was that, three and a half weeks?”
“Twenty-seven days,” Brooke said. “But who’s counting?”
“I thought you’d be done after that.”
“Look at this bathroom. I’ll never be done.”
“Take a break,” Anna urged. “A warm brownie and a cold glass of milk will do you a world of good.”
“No time for brownies. I have to drive all the way to the Home Depot in Glens Falls before it closes.”
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