“Aww, that’s so sweet,” Zoe said. “Do you ever karaoke with your mom, Pepper?”
“Maybe? I can’t remember. There are too many of us to tell if she’s on stage with us when my family gets together to do this.”
Ten sisters. And two brothers. Merry couldn’t even imagine what that was like.
“Hate to leave this lovely party, but I have to work tomorrow,” Pepper said.
Zoe agreed, saying she’d see Mom and Merry bright and early. Mom hugged both of them.
No one hugged Merry.
They did offer her honest smiles, though, which was more than she’d expected when she’d spotted them.
And when Mom and Merry stumbled out into the darkness not long after the other two women left, Merry was smiling too. Despite the weirdness, it had been a fun night.
She and Mom had needed this.
Still, she sniffed the air, trying to detect any hint of Brut while she scanned the parking lot for Audi sedans and morally compromised fathers.
Satisfied that they were alone, Merry loaded Mom into her Cadillac. Her veil got stuck in the door, and Merry had to open the door back up, push the veil in, and try again. “Your friend Matt should’ve come out,” Mom slurred.
“Oh, so you like him better after a few shots of tequila?”
“I don’t dislike him. His job’s simply all wrong for all of us. But I got his number from that sweet Scoey Zott.”
“You mean Zoe Scott?”
“You say avocado, I say armadillo.” Mom hiccupped. “Maybe we’ll crash the private party tomorrow night and do it all again. Girlfriends are good for your soul. And they were huggers! I love huggers. We should both get some.”
They should.
But Merry’s girlfriends would be in France. “Mom?”
Mom’s lips grinned, and her lids slid half-shut. “Hmm?”
“This was your best bachelorette party ever.”
She hiccupped again. “Almost as good as the time your father stole Grace Kelly’s engagement ring for me.”
Merry closed Mom in the car and suppressed the shiver in her bones. She should’ve been grateful that one parent had been willing to go completely straight for her. Mom and Daddy—they’d been the Bonnie and Clyde of jewel thieves. Without the guns. Or the public notoriety.
Still, they’d been quite the criminal pair. Mom had given up riding along with Daddy on heists when Merry was born, though she hadn’t been able to quit Daddy until many years later.
Merry still wondered where her genes had failed her.
If she could’ve been as comfortable as Daddy was with a life of thievery, she would’ve fit better into her own family. She could’ve found a conscienceless biker boy to be her getaway ride, and they could’ve had six leather-clad children whom they would train to be internet thieves as well as pickpockets so that the family business could continue into the next generation. And Mom and Daddy could’ve gotten back together years ago.
Except neither was as nimble as they’d been in their heydays, and they’d probably be separated by iron bars now instead of by their own insurmountable flaws. And Merry would probably have plenty of girlfriends. Prison girlfriends, with names like Tinkerbelle and Spike and Lucky, and instead of doing karaoke, they’d have a secret code for communicating their plans for their next prison break.
There’s my girl, Phoebe Moon said. We’ve missed your crazy imagination, haven’t we, Zack Diggory?
Merry’s imagination will make it difficult should she ever need to pass a polygraph, boring Zack Diggory replied. She should stick to dreaming about things she has the guts to follow through on. Which eliminates me getting another look at that Mustang.
Merry wrenched open the driver’s side door and flung herself in beside Mom.
If she kept up this kind of thought process, she’d have to get Phoebe Moon a new author. One who still specialized in semi-innocent adolescence and outlandish but lovable-in-his-own-way villains.
One who would use a time machine to make Zack Diggory too young to drive. Or have teenage boy thoughts.
A thump on Merry’s window shook the car.
She instinctively knife-handed the glass, and the car rocked again. Mom hiccup-shrieked.
Pain radiated from Merry’s hand down to her elbow. Outside, the snowy white owl picked itself off the ground and fluttered into the night, leaving a trail of downy feathers in its wake.
“Dammit, Titus.” Every good hench-owl needed a name.
“Am I owl, or did that car just attack my drunk?” Mom giggled. “Take me home to my lover, Merry-berry. I’m skunk as a drunk. And you need a girlfriend.”
“Won’t get any grandbabies that way.”
“Modern miracles are medicinous. I just want you to not be alone.”
Merry put the car in gear, backed out of their parking spot, and scanned the lot for Daddy’s car once more. “I’ll never be alone, Mom. I have you.” And Phoebe Moon, and Zack Diggory, and dastardly Uncle Sandy, and her online peeps Bubbles53 and BikerWriter.
She was pathetic.
And, despite having spent two hours hanging out with Mom and Zoe and Pepper, she was once again lonely.
Get used to it, kid, Zack Diggory said. The best heroes always are.
Except Merry wasn’t a hero.
She was simply a girl who liked to tell stories.
And even in France, that was all she’d ever be.
Chapter 18
Men and women hurried past Phoebe Moon on the crowded street, panic in their faces, their mouths open but their voices silent.
Diabolical Uncle Sandy! He was behind this, no doubt.
—Phoebe Moon and the Stolen Sound
* * *
Janice called just after Merry tucked Mom in for the night.
Merry had hit The New York Times list. And she hadn’t just hit it. She’d nearly topped it, with her first and her latest books hanging out at number four and number five on the list, respectively.
And she had no one she could tell.
So for the third night in a row, she found herself at Max’s house.
She didn’t have to knock. Scout announced her presence for her. A moment later, the door opened, and there was Max.
A scowling linebacker standing between her and her own personal heaven-hell haven. He was in low-slung camo pants and a black T-shirt, his feet bare, his hair standing up at the crown as though he’d just rolled out of bed, his complexion pale in the night.
Hell-oo, sexy man, Phoebe Moon said.
That girl needed a sock in her mouth.
Scout twisted around Max, her entire back end wriggling, nosing Merry’s crotch. Merry repositioned the dog and scratched between her ears.
“Looking for round three?” Max said.
She flinched at his flat, not-amused tone.
Also because round three sounded like a great way of celebrating news she couldn’t bring herself to say out loud.
“If I hadn’t been back at the B&B when my mother woke up this morning—”
One dark brow arched over his tired eyes and silenced her meager excuse. “I was seventeen the last time a woman snuck out of my bed without saying goodbye.”
There went that green-scaled dragon roaring its envious displeasure in her ears. “We’re just friends. I didn’t want you feeling any obligation if I was still there this morning.”
“Obviously you staying would’ve meant you were planning to skip moving to Canada and wanted to stay here and live with Scout and Trixie and me forever.”
“I’m not moving to Canada. And see? This is exactly why I couldn’t stay.”
“Saying goodbye would’ve been so difficult? For all I knew, the owl got you on your way home.”
“You know what? Never mind. I thought we were friends, and I thought—”
“Friends worry, Merry. Friends argue. But friends stick around and work it out.” He pushed the door wide. “You want to come in? Or you want to be owl food?”
“The owl’
s at the karaoke bar.”
Even half-strength, his smile could’ve been the eighth wonder of the world. “You sounded good.”
“You were there?”
“Video went up on Facebook half an hour ago, and my phone exploded.”
Probably a video of her snorting in the microphone. Had she joined Pepper in singing about her bitches? The parents of her fans would love that.
Not that Amber Finch would ever become non-anonymous. “You’re welcome for the entertainment.”
He waited, watching her with wary, tired eyes. She should step inside. All the warm air from his house was leaking into the winter night.
“It was fun,” she said. “I don’t ever just hang out with people. In real life. All my…coworkers are online. But it turns out I like people. And I don’t think your people will ever like me.”
Max crossed his arms. He had to be getting cold, but he kept standing there, his attention fixed on her.
Not on his dog wrapping herself around her feet. Not looking for the owl. Not checking his watch, even though there were bluish smudges beneath his eyes and a general weariness about him tonight.
Just focusing straight on her.
“You want my friends to like you,” he finally said.
Yes. “I didn’t mean that,” she said quickly. “I’m leaving Bliss Saturday. You’re staying. They should pick you over me. And they’ve all been really nice.”
She swallowed before she could push forward with her list of buts.
He tilted a know-it-all brow at her. “People are inherently good, Merry. Especially my friends. Tell them why you left. They’ll get it.”
“You’ll tell them once I’m gone.”
“I told them to be nice to you. The rest of it isn’t my business. We’re not serious, remember?”
As if she could ever forget. She rubbed her hand over the throbbing behind her breastbone. “Thank you for asking them to be nice to me. I don’t think my mom’s even noticed how weird this is. Bride stuff, you know?”
“Bridezilla stuff,” he corrected with a half-smile. A tired, worn half-smile, with heavy-lidded eyes still trained on her. “I noticed.”
Merry fisted her hands to keep from reaching for him. Because he deserved a woman who would still be there in the morning, and she couldn’t. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “It’s late. You have to work tomorrow, and I have to—”
A distant bell whispered over the wind.
Every molecule in her body went tense. Max’s eyes snapped to attention.
“No,” she whispered.
His phone rang. A police siren wailed in the distance.
“No,” she said again. She tripped over Scout while she backed down the stairs. “No.”
All the blood had drained from Max’s face, but he hadn’t answered his phone. “Merry—”
“You don’t deserve this.” She’d made him a target. The minute she’d agreed to go to dinner with Max after the Spencer McGraw signing, she’d made his family and their business a target. This was her fault.
And she didn’t know how to fix it. “I have to go.”
Far away. To France.
The sooner, the better.
* * *
Max didn’t try to stop Merry.
Because it was all he could do to get to the bathroom.
The roiling in his gut had been building all evening. Indigestion from the hamburger he’d had at Suckers for lunch, he’d thought. Maybe guilt from not telling Dan that Merry’s dad was a jewel thief after Dan pissed him off over the idea of fixing the Charger.
Scout whimpered on his heels. His phone kept ringing. A cold sweat broke out at his hairline and under his arms, his chest and stomach burned, and his legs trembled.
Shit.
He hadn’t had a stomach bug since he was a kid.
Max wobbled into the bathroom, slammed the door, and slid to the floor. He managed to get a text to Dan, and then he surrendered to the enemy inside his body.
* * *
After running all the way back to the B&B, Merry dashed up the stairs to her room.
This had to end.
Now.
She banged on Mom’s door, and a moment later it opened. Mom’s eyes were bloodshot, her lips turned down. Her hair was clipped back over her ears, and she was in her silk pajamas and robe. “That tequila was a terrible idea. Why didn’t you—Merry? What’s going on?”
“Can I borrow your car?”
Daddy undoubtedly knew what it looked like, but Merry had let Mom pick her up in Toluca on her way to Bliss, since it was on the way.
She hadn’t mentioned she’d sold her car in preparation for her trip overseas or that she only needed to go back to Toluca for one last thing before boarding a bus to the airport in Chicago Saturday evening.
Mom folded her arms.
“Please?” Merry’s voice cracked. “It’s important.”
She had been twelve the morning she woke up alone for the first time. They’d been living just outside Pittsburgh in a comfortable, slightly shabby older neighborhood. She remembered the daffodils blooming on either side of the front stoop when she’d stepped outside and peered at the driveway, looking for either of her parents’ cars.
She remembered the chill of the concrete under her bare feet.
The thick swelling in her chest, the acid in her stomach.
She’d never been alone before.
Never.
And then Mom’s old teal Chevy had whipped around the corner and screeched to a halt. “Meredith, get in.”
She hadn’t gone to school that day.
She’d worn her pajamas for two straight days, sneaking into bathrooms behind gas stations to pee along the way, sleeping off and on in the backseat, until Mom had finally stopped the car for good at a little bungalow in Nebraska.
“I’m divorcing your father,” Mom had said the next morning.
She hadn’t cried then, but Merry had heard her later.
Every night.
For weeks.
Mom had gotten a job as a waitress. She’d left Merry at home with textbooks she’d picked up here and there—Merry hadn’t asked—and Merry had started school in Nebraska that fall.
And she’d hated her mother.
Because Mom had taken her away from Daddy.
“You can hate me all you want, Meredith. Honestly, I hate myself right now. But I’m your mother. It’s my job to protect you. And right now, I need to protect you from him. I know you don’t understand, but I love you, and I will always stand between you and the poor choices he makes.”
And she had.
For years.
But tonight, Mom couldn’t protect Merry or fix this for her.
Someone had tried to break into With This Ring. “You have to trust me,” Merry whispered.
“That’s what your father always said.”
“I am not Daddy.”
Mom pursed her lips. But she stepped back into the bedroom and returned with her keys. “Call me if you need anything.”
Merry pecked her mother’s smooth cheek, and five minutes later Bliss was disappearing in the Cadillac’s rearview mirror.
* * *
Merry’s drive took barely over an hour, and she couldn’t even summon Phoebe Moon to keep her company. By the time she pulled up to the post office in Toluca, she felt like two weeks had passed.
She hadn’t hit The New York Times list. She hadn’t spent a few fun hours at a karaoke bar. She hadn’t slept with Max.
That girl was someone else. This girl?
This girl was once again in the midst of her daddy’s mistakes.
She hadn’t been followed to Toluca, and the streets were silent outside. Unintentionally phallic-shaped Christmas decorations hung from every street lamp along Main Street, but otherwise, the blow-up yard decorations had been deflated and most of the lights on the houses and businesses in the sleepy little town had been turned off.
Merry slid out of Mom’s car. She held her head high and ca
rried herself with purpose as she entered the twenty-four-hour post office lobby.
Phoebe Moon, if you don’t want people to be suspicious of you, you shouldn’t do things that look suspicious.
Merry scowled at Zack Diggory. Go away. I want Phoebe Moon.
She squatted before the post office box she’d rented, turned the key in the lock, and blew out a short, relieved breath at the sight of the small brown package in the narrow box.
A strand of her hair was visible under the clear packing tape on each of the six sides, and the address label had the purple smiley face in the corner, just as she’d put it.
If Daddy had figured out where she’d stored the ring, he hadn’t been able to get to it. And no one else had touched it either.
She left the keys in the post office box, tucked the small brown package into her purse, and forced herself to walk normally back to Mom’s car.
No police officers cruised by. No sirens sounded in the distance. No rabid owls swooped down to steal her treasure.
Obnoxious treasure that it was.
If she were caught with it—
No. Having a replica of a famous ring wasn’t a crime. Possession didn’t prove intent.
She wasn’t going to steal the real thing.
She was going to give the fake to Max.
Tomorrow.
First thing.
She’d go tonight, but who knew how late Max would be at the store with the police?
She’d just pulled out of the parking lot, firmly ordering herself not to drive past either the Cheese House or her old apartment, when her phone rang with a number she didn’t recognize.
Her pulse pinged.
You should’ve told the police where to find it, Amber Finch. You can’t write my stories from jail.
Zack Diggory was a terrible influence on Phoebe Moon.
Merry answered her phone and put it on speaker, eyes scanning the horizon and her mirrors for any sign of a tail or movement. “Hello?”
“Merry-berry, I didn’t do it.”
She tightened her grip on the steering wheel, and the car whined. “What didn’t you do, Daddy?”
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