“I read a story online, but . . .”
“But what, for pity’s sake?” Mama snapped, her patience all but gone. She’d guarded the Cassidy secret better than Nana’s dogs guarded her precious goats. The idea that all would be revealed meant she’d have some explaining to do to Hoss McClaine, for starters, and to the whole town, truth be told. They all knew we were an eccentric family, but peculiar they could handle. If it turned into something they’d perceive as witchery in the very big brass North Texas buckle of the Bible Belt? I wasn’t sure we could expect much tolerance.
Michele hesitated, darting a glance at her sister. “I—I don’t think you can always trust what you find on the Internet. It’s probably not even about y’all.”
Behind Michele, the sheer drapery panels fluttered. The pot of lavender Mama had brought me a few months back sat on a little corner plant stand. It bloomed no matter what, but now the stalks arched, the tips of the flowers reaching toward the table. A reaction to Mama’s surge of emotions.
God almighty. The Cassidy women and our charms had always flown under the radar in a don’t ask, don’t tell kind of manner, and it was better that way. Madelyn had been the first outsider I’d ever told, and that was only because she was part of the North Texas Paranormal Society and had heard rumors about a magical family. But a story? On the Internet?
Michele studied her Santa doll as if stuffing it just right was suddenly the only thing she cared about, but I could almost see her ears twitching. “It’s probably nothing,” she said again, but my head felt as if it were filled with batting thicker than the dolls we were making.
“Of course it’s nothing!” I managed to say, laughing it off. I couldn’t get any more out of them without clueing them in that maybe there was something to the story, so I signaled to Mama to drop it. We swallowed our worry, hard as it was to do, and went back to the Santas.
The rest of the afternoon passed painfully slowly as I handed out the muslin ovals with their hand-painted Santa faces, we glued the flat, fabric-covered bases onto the bottom of the bodies with Fabri-Tac, and even as I instructed the women on picking out just the right pieces of faux fur, loop tassels, ribbons, and other trims.
Finally, I ushered the group out, their Santa dolls scattered on the dining table for them to finish at the next class.
The second the door shut behind Olive, Diane, Michele, and Eleanor, I spun around to look at Madelyn, the only paranormal groupie I knew. “Do you know what they’re talking about?”
Her gaze met mine, but her brown, gold-flecked eyes were clouded. “No idea, love,” she said.
I pushed aside the pile of scrap fabrics that had wound up on the computer desk and plopped down in front of it. Not even the sudden warm air encircling me, which I knew was Meemaw trying to bolster me up, could take away the icy sting I felt at feeling my family secrets threatened with exposure.
Michele had brushed away whatever she’d seen about the Cassidy clan, but she’d read something that had sparked her interest.
Mama hovered behind me on one side, and Madelyn stood on the other as I moved the mouse, bringing the screen to life. My fingers flew over the keyboard and after a few clicks, I found it.
Dread crept from the soles of my cowboy boots all the way up to my hair follicles as I read the headline.
Charmed Family Makes Magic in Bliss, Texas
I skimmed, looking for our names, details about our charms, and any other identifiers. Our names weren’t there, but plenty of other details were, including what the inside of Buttons & Bows looked like. Descended from an outlaw. A streak of blond hair. Magical, unique “gifts.”
God almighty. I went from cold to clammy, sweat beading on my forehead. Mama put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Everythin’ will be okay. You have to know to look for it. Nobody—but nobody—will believe it, if they’re even able to find it,” she said, but I could hear the doubt in her voice. Stories got around, and if Michele, who was just an ordinary woman in Bliss, had read it, who else had? More than that, had any of them told other people?
I wanted to spend my time finishing everything on my list for the fashion show and the other Winter Wonderland events, and maybe, by some miracle, figure out who had wanted something bad to happen to Dan Lee Chrisson. Finding out what my hometown would do if they found out the truth about the Cassidy women was one thing that was not on my To Do list.
Chapter 10
My mind was whirring and I was ready to jump out of my skin.
And from the odd looks Mama and Madelyn were tossing my way, I wasn’t hiding it too well. “Are you coming down with something, Harlow?” Madelyn asked, touching the back of her hand to my forehead.
“No, no. I’m fine.” I started gathering up the scraps of trim the women had discarded.
“Sugar,” Mama said, “are you sure?”
I stopped what I was doing and turned to look at Madelyn and my mother. “Sure of what?”
“Maybe you’re havin’ some latent effect from that fall, or somethin’?” She looked me up and down. “Sure you’re okay?”
I waved her hand away and scooped up another handful of scraps. “I told you, I’m fine.”
“Then, sugar,” she said, lunging forward and grabbing hold of my arm, “why in heaven’s name are you throwing away all that good trim?”
“What?” I looked at her, baffled, and then looked at the loosely woven basket I used as a garbage container. It was overflowing with mounds of loop fringe, cording, tassel fringe, and everything else that had, a minute ago, been organized in the different bins sitting on the folding table.
I gasped. “I . . . I did that?” What had I been thinking? I gave myself a mental thump on the head. Of course I hadn’t been thinking. Not about fabric, anyway.
The second the words left my lips, chaos hit. It was as if someone lifted the garbage can and flung it straight up into the air. Mama, Madelyn, and I stood still as statues as the fabric scraps flew around the dining room, circling like a tornado of fripperies and fringe. And then, as if someone had turned off the power, the swirling stopped cold and the trim fell to the floor.
I snuck a look at Madelyn, holding my breath. She knew about Meemaw’s otherworldly presence, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t be freaked out by a demonstration. But she looked enraptured by the magical moment, her cinnamon-colored skin flushed and a dash of pink on her cheeks. “Fantastic,” she whispered.
The front door opened, the bells on the knob jingling. We all three whipped around to see Will standing in the doorway, his toolbox in hand, a stack of air-conditioner filters under one arm.
“Hey,” I said, swallowing my nerves. Will didn’t know about Meemaw—or any part of my magical charm. If he’d arrived ten seconds earlier, he would have gotten a good gander at my family’s gifts in action.
“Hey, yourself,” he said, taking in the mess all over the floor. “What happened here? One of Coleta’s goats escape again?”
That was a good guess, and safer than the truth, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to lie, so I sort of moved my head in a noncommittal half nod, half shake.
He set his toolbox down and laid the filters next to it, out of the way, and then looked around. A new central air and heat system was one of the few changes Meemaw had tackled in the old house, but I was eternally grateful she had since I lived and worked in the same place.
“Any other damage?” If it was odd to him that the chaos was confined to just the dining room, he didn’t comment.
“Nope.”
When I didn’t offer more detail, he stepped back outside and brought in the ladder he’d left on the front porch, then shut the door behind him, walked to the steps leading to the open dining room, and put his hand up on the railing between the two rooms. “I just heard something awful,” he said.
The coil of nerves in my stomach tightened.
“What’d y’hear, sugar?” Mama asked him.
Will turned his Longhorns cap around to face backward, but ba
rely got a sound out before the bells on the door rang again. But this time the string of silver flew off from the force of the door bursting open. Raylene stumbled in, her face pale and drawn.
Will dropped his hand from the banister and moved aside as I rushed forward. “Raylene?”
“Good Lord,” Mama said in a hushed breath behind me. “She looks like she’s seen a ghost.”
“Who’s that?” Madelyn whispered to her.
Mama responded, but I ignored their whispering as I focused on Raylene. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
She staggered over to the green and gold paisley damask sofa. Mama and Madelyn beelined to either side of Raylene, and I perched on the edge of the coffee table, knee to knee with her.
“M-my baby,” she stammered. “I—I didn’t know where . . . where else to go. Y-you said you’d help. The . . . the sheriff—”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. My vision of her in the embroidered brocade cheongsam had been so clear when I’d seen her at the Denison mansion, but now all I saw was a blur of gray. My eyebrows lifted in question as I shot a quick glance at Will, and from the way his left eye pinched slightly, I had the feeling that whatever he’d been about to tell us, we were going to hear from Raylene.
“Is Boone okay?” I asked Raylene. “What about the sheriff?”
Her hand had grown clammy and her face drained of all color. She looked paler than a ghost. “I—I shouldn’t have come. What can you do? What can anyone do?” she wailed.
She started to rise, her gaze skittering from me to Mama to Madelyn, but she suddenly fell back, as if she were pulled, and I had a fleeting thought that Meemaw wanted her to stay put. Raylene, bless her heart, buried her face in her hands.
Mama rubbed Raylene’s back, making soothing shhh shhh shhh sounds, but she raised her gaze to me.
I shrugged helplessly.
“Come on, love,” Madelyn said through Raylene’s cries. “You’re here. What in the bloody hell could be so bad?”
I caught Madelyn’s eyes and shook my head, frantically trying to communicate telepathically with her, but of course that didn’t work since I wasn’t capable of telepathy and neither was she. The one thing we both knew was that something was definitely wrong. Raylene had already lost the father of her child. What more could happen to the poor woman?
Raylene’s shoulders heaved. “My . . . my . . .”
Before she could get an entire sentence out, the front door swung open. Josie sidled in, leading with her pregnant belly. She glanced at us, but quickly turned left instead of right and headed straight up the three steps to the dining room. She’d missed the entire dollmaking class, but leave it to her to show up in the thick of a new drama.
She skirted around Will and his ladder, aiming for the kitchen. “Tell me you have some fried okra,” she called over her shoulder.
The girl had the maternity cravings bad. She didn’t wait for an answer; instead, a second later I could hear her clanging around the kitchen, on the hunt for something else when she realized a bowl of fried okra was not at the ready.
I turned back to Raylene’s tearstained face. She’d angled her body on the sofa and was turned, staring into the kitchen. Her hand rested on her stomach and just like that, I froze. The truth hit me like a bale of hay to the head. “Oh no.”
Raylene didn’t seem to hear me, but Madelyn, Mama, and Will all turned to look at me.
“What?” Madelyn mouthed.
“Harlow Jane?” Mama said, lowering her chin.
Will stayed silent, but I could tell he knew the truth.
“Where’s Boone?” I asked Raylene, my voice scarcely more than a whisper.
A sound escaped from her throat, but her attention never wavered from the kitchen, where I could see the mess of okra I’d bought at the market spilled over the counter. Josie had poured half a box of cornmeal into a gallon-sized Baggie. I didn’t have fried okra, so she was going to make some.
“Raylene,” I said again, more forcefully.
As if she’d just registered my voice, she jerked her head toward me, breaking her trance.
“Where’s Boone?” I asked again.
She swallowed, staring, and then shook her head. “He’s . . . he’s g-gone.”
I felt three pairs of eyes on me, but didn’t break my gaze from Raylene’s. “What do you mean, gone?”
Raylene looked up through her moist eyelashes. “Gone. Gone! He was in his crib at home and then he wasn’t. He’s gone!” Her voice descended to a whisper and her face twisted.
Both Madelyn and I went into question mode, but Raylene didn’t seem able to focus. She stared straight ahead for a solid two minutes. Finally, she blinked, breaking out of her trance, and turned to me. “I was in the house. How could . . . could someone sneak in and t-take him? Where is he? Where’s Boone?” She grabbed my hand, sobbing. “Where’s my baby?”
Chapter 11
Josie stood on the threshold of the kitchen, the knife she’d been using to cut okra hanging loosely by her side. “What in the world is going on?”
I glanced at Will, silently asking him to bring Josie up to speed so I could stay focused on the distraught woman in front of me. It was as if he could read my mind. He was next to her in a flash, his voice nothing more than a low rumble from where I sat as he filled her in.
I tried to pull more information from Raylene. She told me that there was no evidence of breaking and entering, which had raised a whole bunch of red flags for Deputy McClaine. Hattie and Arnie were organizing a search party. And Raylene herself had been frantically driving around Bliss until she couldn’t see straight, which had led her here.
“I r-remember you from school,” she said through her sobs. “You were n-never like those other g-girls who would stab their best friend in the back if it meant they’d get to d-date one of the football p-players. You were never a mean girl, Harlow. Never a homewrecker.”
In a different situation, I’d have smiled at the compliment, but Raylene’s baby was missing and my heart was in my throat. “People are out looking for him and I’m sure they’ll find him soon,” I said, wishing that was a comfort but knowing that it really wasn’t.
I left Raylene with Mama and went to the kitchen to fetch her a glass of water. The buttercup retro-style appliances usually filled me with as much comfort as the warm air Meemaw often encircled me with. But not now. Not today. Not with Boone missing.
Will had disappeared through the Dutch door onto the back porch, his cell phone clamped to his ear. A grim expression played on Josie’s face, the knife in her hand pointed forward like a weapon, as if she were ready to bolt and join the search party.
In a flash I was by her side, gently taking it from her. “They’ll find him.”
“Should I—”
I eyed the heap of cut okra on my maple cutting board, the slime of the mucilage looking none too appetizing, but I knew that any true Southerner regarded the odd little vegetable as a delectable bite-sized treat. “Finish the okra,” I said.
She sighed, one hand on her belly, and sent a worried glance toward Raylene. “Poor woman. I can’t imagine what she’s going through. First her husband leaves her, then he dies, then her baby’s kidnapped. He’s her child, but he’s also all she has left of her husband,” she said.
“Ex-husband,” I corrected.
“Whatever. She loved him once.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “If anyone ever tried to take my baby, they’d be taking a piece of me and”—she picked up the knife again and waved it around in front of her—“I wouldn’t stop until I had justice.”
She started toward the Dutch door, but I pulled her back. She blinked and stopped. “We should help, shouldn’t we? Maybe we can find him.”
I wanted nothing more than to find Boone, but I had no idea where to look. “We can help most by staying with Raylene and keeping her company.”
She wiped away the tears that had pooled in her eyes before turning to the counter to finish her chopping, wi
th concentrated force now. “Mark my words, Harlow. There’s something not right about this.” She stopped and gasped as she whirled around. “Maybe she killed her husband and staged a kidnapping to throw people off the trail!” she rasped.
My suspicions had been more focused on Hattie, but Raylene could have killed Dan Lee, and Josie’s theory had merit. “Why would she—?” I began, but I stopped abruptly as ideas started piecing themselves together in my mind.
I stared at Josie, my feet suddenly rooted to the floor. “Say that again.”
She put the knife down and started shoveling the gooey okra into the Baggie of cornmeal. “What, that maybe she killed her husband and staged a kidnapping?”
My head pounded—or maybe it was the gate between my property and Nana’s goat farm blowing in the wind and smacking against the post over and over again. “No, earlier. About her husband leaving her for another woman.”
Her brow furrowed as she thought back. “Um, I said that he’d left her, found a little hottie, and that if anyone did anything to my baby, I’d want justice.”
“No.” She’d said something else that had stuck in the back of my mind. The gate between the Sundance Kids and my backyard banged again and then it hit me. “You said your baby is part of you.”
She looked at me like I was off my rocker. “Yeah—he’s growing inside of me.”
“But he—or she—is part of you. You said Boone is all Raylene has left of Dan Lee.”
Josie slowly zipped up the Baggie and shook it, coating the okra. “Right.”
The gate continued to slam outside and my gaze drifted to the door, past Will, who still stood on the porch, and to the goats in the distance. “He’s also all Maggie has left,” I said.
She stopped shaking the Baggie of okra. “Maggie who works with your grandmother?”
I nodded, another thought whirring into my head. “What if it was Maggie?” I said, my voice scarcely above a whisper to make sure Raylene couldn’t overhear our conversation.
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