by Laura Bowers
“Mom, stop, it’s okay.” I kneel to help her. “I’m not upset nor would I have any right to be. I just want you to be happy, just like Dad would have. So whenever you want to talk about it, I’m here.”
Mom freezes, her fingers poised over a wayward kidney bean as though she expects me to protest—or wants me to protest. She abandons the bean and slumps down on the floor, leaning against the stove. I sit beside her as she says, “Dee, I thought I was ready to date. And Rex really is a nice man, but…” Mom sniffs, red blotches dotting her cheeks. “It was so easy with your dad. I never had to think, you know? I could be myself around him. I could … fart and he wouldn’t care, but with Rex … How can you go back to casual dating after you’ve spent half of your life as a devoted wife? It’s like going backward, and maybe … maybe I just don’t have the energy to start over, sweetie.”
“No, Mom.” I lean into her and loop my arm around her bent knee. “It’s going forward, not backward. And honestly, you never farted in front of Dad at the beginning, did you? At least I hope you didn’t.”
A slow smile spreads on her face. “No, of course not, but who am I kidding, what would Rex want with a stressed-out widow with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against her? No. Forget it. I wouldn’t know how to act on a date, anyway.”
“What? First off, Mom, the case is not going to trial if I have anything to do with it. And second, you have me as your own personal coach! My first bit of advice,” I say, pointing to her chili, “is to stay away from the beans if you’d rather not have gas.”
* * *
Before we leave, the Cutsons, wearing magician’s capes and curly mustaches drawn above their upper lips, run up to the Subaru that Sabrina borrowed. Lyle doesn’t skip a beat when he sees Natalie and me crouching on the rear floorboard so Mom and Ivy won’t catch us with Sabrina and realize we haven’t already left for a sale at Kohl’s. Lyle simply hands me all of his spy gear through the open window: binoculars, mini-recorders, goggles—what for, I have no idea—and a notepad. “You sure you don’t need us to come along?” he asks, staring down at me with eyes round like brown acorns.
“Yeah, what if you need backup?” Tanner says, resting his chin on the window ledge and glancing at Sabrina and Roxanne in the front seat.
I take in their eager, dirty faces. The little creeps only want to be included, so it wouldn’t hurt to give them their own assignment. “Hmm, I’ll tell you what, boys. My grandmother, Madeline, has been acting very suspicious. Why don’t you spy on her and report back to me later, okay?”
“Okay!” the twins yell before running off.
As Sabrina starts the car, the significance of being with Roxanne and Sabrina Owens—the girl I’ve hated for so long—hits me. And we had fun today, despite everything, but what will happen when school starts again? Will everyone but Natalie and me go back to being enemies? I hope the answer will be no.
* * *
So far, so good.
We drop Natalie and my bike that was stowed in the trunk off at Riverside Estates’ entrance before parking behind the Swains’ dumpster. As Natalie rides to Blaine’s, Roxanne stays in the car while Sabrina and I creep to a curb near Larson’s house that is shielded from view by a row of unruly barberry shrubs. We sit, pretending to talk on our cells so any snooping neighbors will see us as normal teenagers—not two girls about to commit a misdemeanor. Or is breaking and entering a felony?
“Are you sure Blaine won’t recognize your neighbor’s car?” I whisper.
“Relax. He wouldn’t, so stay focused. Okay, Natalie is at the front stoop, she’s ringing the doorbell.”
We hear Blaine answer with a slick “Well, hello, there!” I peek around the bush and see Natalie pretending to admire Larson’s elaborate hickory door before stepping inside.
Be cool, Nat, be cool.
Minutes pass in slow agony as we wait for her cue.
Then, finally, my phone vibrates once. I nudge Sabrina. “Okay, Natalie has Blaine out of sight in the kitchen.”
We half creep/half casually walk to the front steps and stop at the door long enough for Sabrina to ask, “Do you think he set the alarm?”
“No, he never did whenever I visited. You?”
“No, but if it goes off, we bolt. Got it?”
Sabrina grabs the doorknob. She takes a deep breath and cracks the door open. We wait for the alarm. Nothing, thank God, so we tiptoe into the foyer, clinging SWAT-team style to the wall. Sabrina pulls a flashlight from her pocket and opens the basement door as we hear Natalie laughing at a lame joke of Blaine’s. As we sneak down the steps, memories flood my thoughts—all the movies I let him pick, the food I let him choose, all the times he tried to pressure me into doing something I wasn’t ready to do.
Yeah, I really was a Miss Almond Pudding.
No. Get a grip, Dee.
Sabrina goes straight to Blaine’s desk and hands me the flashlight. I try to slow my breathing as she starts to open the drawers, one by one. “Keep the light steady, okay?” Sabrina whispers, while flipping through a pile of wrinkled papers and old essays. “Come on, come on, where’s that report card?”
At the top of the stairs, the basement door creaks open. Blaine’s voice echoes down the steps. “So, Priscilla, you want to see the downstairs?”
Oh my Lord. They aren’t supposed to come down here. Natalie is supposed to get him outside somehow. Every hair on my body rises in panic. Sabrina jumps, slamming her thigh against the drawer and biting her lip to keep from calling out.
“Absolutely,” Natalie purrs, even though—hello—we’d be totally busted. “But didn’t you say you had an amazing view of the river from the deck? I’d love to see that first.”
You go, Nat, whip out the Superflirt.
I let out my breath when the door closes. Sabrina attacks another drawer with extra frenzy until she finds what she came for. “Aha! Here it is, his old report card. It’s from a school in Philadelphia.”
I yank at her shirt. “Okay, then let’s hurry!”
We creep back upstairs. Our plan was to use the report card to find out what part of Pennsylvania they came from, and then snoop in Larson’s office for some kind of evidence that he’s up to no good. But after we slip inside the room, I lean against the closed door as Sabrina dashes to his clutter-free desk. “This feels wrong,” I say. “We shouldn’t be in here.”
Sabrina stops digging through a drawer long enough to say, “Dee, we would never be in here had he not decided to mess with our mothers, so start searching.”
Good point.
But snooping through his file cabinet freaks me out, especially when a horn blast comes from outside. I run to the window that faces the Swains’ driveway. “Oh, man, Roxanne is waving for some reason. Should we leave?”
“No, just keep looking!” Sabrina whispers, opening another drawer and finding a green vinyl bag, the same kind Mom uses for bank deposits. She unzips it and pulls out a deposit slip with several checks attached with a paper clip.
There’s more honking as Sabrina reads one of the checks. She gasps. “Dee … it’s for ten thousand dollars from Kathleen Myers, the woman you saw Larson with!”
Ten thousand dollars?
Sabrina hands me the check. “Quick—the copier. Turn it on.”
I run over to the copier, but before I can flip the switch, I hear what sounds like the garage door opening.
No. It can’t be Larson.
Moments later we hear the mudroom door open. Footsteps echo in the foyer, footsteps that are too heavy to be Blaine’s. It is Larson, that’s why Roxanne honked! “Hide!” I hiss, grabbing Sabrina’s arm and pulling her behind the leather sofa.
The door swings open.
Someone walks in.
Don’t panic, oh, for the love of God, don’t panic.
The desk chair squeaks. My lungs ache from holding my breath as Larson picks up the phone and dials. “Henry! It’s Larson, calling to let you know I’ll be mailing the interest payment for the second mo
rtgage on Monday. And thanks for being patient, Henry, I can assure you there will be no more late payments. I have everything under control.”
Yeah, that’s what he thinks.
Larson hangs up and taps his desk a few times, his chair squeaking again as he stands and walks back out of the room. When he closes the door behind him, I swat Sabrina in the rear. “I thought you said he was on a business trip and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow night!”
“Well, golly gee, he must have lied, imagine that!” Sabrina whispers back, kneeling to unlock the window. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
No. The check in my hand. We can’t leave without a copy for proof. “Dee, let’s go!” Sabrina pleads when I creep to the copier and place it on the glass. Please be a quiet one! Thankfully, the copier doesn’t rumble and groan like ours does, but a red light comes on, saying the machine needs to warm up.
Come on, come on!
The light finally turns green. I hit the button, grabbing the copy as soon as it comes out. “Okay, now we can go,” I tell Sabrina.
But it’s too late. The footsteps return.
There’s nowhere to hide except for beside the file cabinet. I press my back to the wall, my heart pounding like an out of control jack hammer. The copier! The copier is still on, with the check inside. Crap, I’m going to be arrested after all. Breaking and entering? Violating a restraining order? How many years is that going to get me?
The doorknob turns.
The door inches open.
Larson steps in, but just as if it’s God Himself coming to our rescue, someone pounds on the front door. I can hear Larson curse underneath his breath before he leaves to open it with a surprised “Roxanne, is everything okay?”
Roxanne!
“Mr. Walker, thank goodness!” she says, sounding both desperate and dumb. “One of the toilets in our new house is leaking and water’s getting all over the hardwoods!”
No way.
She’s playing the helpless card!
“Now, now, don’t panic, Roxanne,” Larson says in a condescending tone. “There’s a shutoff valve right at the base. All you have to do is—”
“You mean inside the toilet?” Roxanne timidly asks.
“No, it’s at the base, by the floor,” Larson chides.
Seriously, does he think she’s that stupid? No time to analyze. “Let’s go!” Sabrina whispers as she eases the window open. I grab the check, returning it to the bank bag and turning off the copier before running to the window and climbing out. We both land right in an evergreen shrub.
“Ouch!”
“Shh! Be quiet!”
We sprint across the lawn like a rabid dog is nipping at our heels, not stopping until we reach our rendezvous point at the development’s entrance. My lungs ache as we flop down by a hydrangea bush. Sabrina lies on the grass, her face beet red and her chest still heaving when Roxanne drives up in the Subaru and Natalie joins us on my bike. Nat lets it fall to the ground and slumps down beside us. “I—I—pretended to get a text from my mom, saying I had to come home, after I heard Roxanne talking to Larson,” she wheezes. “Did you find anything?”
“Oh, yes, you bet your sweet tush we did,” I tell her.
After filling Natalie in on all the juicy details, Sabrina turns to me. “Dee … I’m sorry.”
“About what? You were fantastic back there.”
She shakes her head. “No, about the letter. It drove me crazy, the way Blaine always talked about you. I wanted to humiliate you so maybe—he’d talk about me, instead. And,” she says to Natalie, “I’m sorry for taking that picture of you. I was a total…”
“Jerk?” Natalie provides.
“Yeah, a giant jerk.” She tells Natalie to get out her cell, and thrusts most of her index finger straight up her nose. “So go ahead, take your best shot. I deserve it.”
* * *
After our evening of misdemeanors, Natalie and Sabrina head for home, but Roxanne bravely volunteers to help me show Ivy our discovery. I’m hoping Ivy won’t scream as much over how we found the check if someone is with me. Yeah, right, wishful thinking. Before we can make it to Ivy’s RV Victoria Swain appears.
“Roxanne, there you are!” She smiles and holds up a large pamphlet. “I’ve been dying to show you what came in the mail today.”
Roxanne mumbles an annoyed “not again” under her breath. “Mom, I’m not interested in seeing any product brochures or samples for the new house right now, okay?” But when she notices an auto mechanic posing on the pamphlet’s front page, she stops. “Oh, is … is that for Lincoln Tech?”
“It sure is! Did you know there’s a branch right here in Columbia and—” Mrs. Swain stops, twisting an earring, realizing that, of course, Roxanne already knows this. She gives me a polite glance that is laced with guilt and says, “I, uh, also have an application, Roxanne, that maybe we could fill out together. And maybe you can tell me about that first female NASCAR pit chief, what was her name, Cindy Woodsy?”
It seems as though a silent truce is formed between them, one of acceptance and hope.
Roxanne takes the pamphlet. “Woosley, Mom. Cindy Woosley.”
Huh. Well done, Mrs. Swain, well done.
They leave together—which would have been delightfully touching had it not been for the fact that I now have to face Ivy on my own. Oh, well, time to put on my big girl panties and get it over with. But as I pass the playground, the Cutsons jump off the monkey bars, their foreheads slick with sweat and their capes now torn.
“Miss Dee, we did what you asked!”
“Did what?” I ask them.
“Duh! Spy on that Madeline woman,” Tanner says. “We don’t fool around with secret missions. Should we report to you now or later?”
Right, my secret “mission” for them. “Sure, what’s the scoop, fellows?”
Lyle leans forward, darting his eyes left and right to make sure there are no other spies hiding in the pine trees. “Well, she spent an awfully long time arguing on the phone with some Arthur guy. He your granddaddy? She kept yellin’ and saying it weren’t right for him to talk to their lawyer while she was gone.”
“Yeah,” Tanner says. “And don’t tell my momma I said a dirty word, but she also said to him, ‘Piss on your papers.’ So we think—”
“So we think your granddaddy got a new puppy named Lawyer who he’s trying to potty train!” Lyle finishes triumphantly.
Just hearing the word “lawyer” makes me shudder. And pissing on papers? That doesn’t make any sense. But the Cutsons look so proud of themselves that I lean forward to kiss their grubby cheeks. “Good job, guys. I knew I could count on—”
Wait. Lawyer? Papers? And the fact that she’s been here for so long without a good reason? I think I know why.
Madeline is a Miss Almond Pudding, too.
* * *
“Young lady, I was just about to turn in early for the evening,” Madeline barks from her open cabin door, dressed in pajamas, dirty tissues littering the floor behind her. “Is there some kind of emergency, Dee?”
I shift my weight, hearing laughter and the sound of metal hitting metal coming from the horseshoe pits. Should I ask to be invited in? No, from the way she’s gripping the doorknob, I know what her answer will be. So instead, I hold up the white box I was hiding behind my back and say, “No, I just wanted to bring you something.”
She reads the box, her brow furrowed. “Skinny Cows? You felt it was necessary to bring me junk food?”
I nod. “Yeah, they come in handy … when you’re upset or when you need to really talk about something.”
Madeline stiffens, fidgeting with her pajama collar with one hand and clutching her stomach with the other, making it look like she’s both pushing and pulling herself at the same time. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Dee. I’m not upset, nor is there anything that needs to be discussed, so if you don’t mind—”
There is no way to get to it other than the direct route.
/> “Is my grandfather asking you for a divorce?”
She steps back, her aloof mask refusing to budge. “Young lady, I don’t know what you’re—”
“Is that why you’re here? Why didn’t you tell us?”
Her face pales, making me realize that I am right. Madeline sucks in her cheeks and stands tall. “Well, Dee, I suppose that’s … What I mean to say is…”
She releases the death grip on her collar and tries to compose herself by smoothing out the wrinkles. She then walks to a rocking chair on the porch, sitting daintily as though she’s dressed in heels instead of sloppy pajamas. “What I meant to say is that yes, Arthur and I are separated. But I felt no reason to bring up the topic because I have the situation completely in hand.”
Uh, no. She doesn’t.
I sit beside her, saying nothing, just feeling the sweet dampness of July night air and listening to the chirping crickets.
Madeline gazes out over the trout pond, her mouth held in a grim line. After her neighbor at the cabin next door hangs wet beach towels on the railing and a round of choruses comes from the horseshoe pit over someone’s ringer, she takes a quick breath. “Yes, there’s nothing to discuss and there’s no reason for any dramatics, because I’m okay. I’m perfectly okay.”
“Oh.” I say softly. “I just—”
“After all,” she interrupts, her back rigid and ankles crossed like an etiquette school graduate. “A woman of my capabilities surely can handle life on her own … even though starting over isn’t what I expected after forty-five years of marriage.”
She clasps her hands.
“And the fact that Arthur now wants to live without me is of no consequence … even though you would think that a lifelong spouse who you thought was the one person who loved you would at least offer some kind of a warning that your world was about to be flushed down the toilet.”
Her lower lip starts to quiver. “And it doesn’t matter that Arthur wants to keep the RV, the only home I’ve known for so long. But securing new living arrangements will not be an issue. I can live … I can—”
She turns away, hiding the tears now streaming down her face, tears that I suspect she’s been hiding for a very long, long time. I tear open the box of Skinny Cows and hand her one. But before she can take that first bite, a voice comes from the path below.