Secrets of Southern Girls

by Haley Harrigan

  “Nell sold her land. The field is gone.”

  “Gone,” August repeats.

  She doesn’t pull into the flower shop’s gravel parking lot (too obvious); instead, she turns onto the paved road that leads to the new park, the road that hadn’t even existed when the town was theirs. She pulls close to the curb and stops the car. The Honda’s headlights illuminate the new facility.

  “You should have told me,” August says, looking straight ahead.

  “What would I have said?”

  “You brought me here. You could have mentioned it.”

  She nods, but she knows he can’t see her in the darkness. “It’s so different,” she says.

  “Everything is different.”

  August opens his door and steps out, uncertain. She follows him. “I can’t believe it,” he says. “I can’t believe that this is where it all happened, and now it’s gone. It’s nothing.”

  “Yeah,” Julie says uneasily. “So…about that burglary…” She nods toward Nell’s shop.

  “I was here once,” August blurts out. “At night,” he says. “Late. With Reba.”

  “In the shop?” Julie asks. She shakes her head, surprised that Reba would have brought August here. She knew they’d met at the river, beyond the field, but this is a surprise.

  “It was raining.”

  She waits for him to say more, but his memories belong to him, and he’s not sharing.

  “Okay, we should obviously try to go through the back door, so we’re not visible from the street.” She looks around in the darkness. “Not that anyone would be driving through here at this time of night, anyway.” Lawrence Mill has no bars, no restaurants—you have to drive into Opal for that kind of thing. This place has always been a ghost town after dark, everything shuttered until morning light.

  “Lead the way.”

  The gravel crunches beneath her feet as they leave the paved drive and make their way to Nell’s shop. The back porch sags beneath Julie’s feet as she approaches the door. She can see through the windows that there’s no one inside. She’d known there wouldn’t be. Crickets chirp in the distance. She opens the screen door; it groans in protest, too loud. She puts her hand on the cool knob of the back door, tries to twist it. Fails.

  “Okay, it’s locked.”

  August makes a noise behind her that could be a laugh. “Shit, Jules, of course it’s locked. Did you really expect to just turn the knob and walk in?”

  She spins to face him, and he’s closer than she’d realized. They’re almost chest to chest in the shadows. “I didn’t expect it,” she whispers. She can feel his breath, hot on her cheek. “But it would have made things easier. Try the windows.”

  Together, they check the windows lining the back of the shop and find them all locked.

  “What now, criminal mastermind?” August says, as if the whole thing is starting to amuse him.

  “Do you have a credit card?” she asks. He raises his eyebrows, and she points to the doorknob. No dead bolt, only a simple cylinder.

  He shakes his head as he pulls his wallet from his back pocket and hands her a plastic card. His room key to The Inn.

  “You know they’ll charge you for this, if I break it,” she says as she slides it into the space between the door and the frame.

  “So don’t break it.”

  She leans down and pulls out a tiny flashlight she brought along. She keeps it in her purse for emergencies. Not emergencies like this one, but it will work. “Hold this.”

  August shines the light on the doorknob. “Jules, let’s just break the window,” he says, aiming the light at the square window that makes up the top part of the door.

  “What? We can’t just break a window.”

  “Yeah, we can. We can pay to fix it, after.”

  “We can’t break the window. Give me a minute. I think I’m getting somewhere.” When she worked at Nell’s, she’d often reach the shop, only to realize she’d left her keys at home. Instead of going back to retrieve them, she’d figured out how to use her learner’s license to catch the lock and open the door.

  Same lock, same door. She can do this.

  She can feel August behind her, feel his warmth. Feel him watching.

  The key card catches on something, and she pushes the door open.

  “Holy shit, you did it,” August murmurs.

  “I did it. Follow me.” She takes his hand without thinking and leads him into the shop. The wooden floors creak beneath their weight, and something, somewhere, starts to beep. A box on the wall to their right is blinking. They freeze.

  “Shit!” Julie says. “Nell never had an alarm when I worked here!”

  “Well, things change,” August hisses. “How did you not notice it when you were here earlier?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking about breaking in, then.”

  “Do you know what her code would be?”

  Julie steps up to the panel and types in numbers. The code on the safe (Nell’s birthday). No luck. It’s the only code she can think of, though she starts to try all manner of random combinations. Until the box starts screaming a deafening, earsplitting melody. Lights hidden in each corner of the room begin to flash.

  “Shit, Jules!” August says. “We’ve got to get out of here, now!”

  She ignores him and heads for the back room. It’s not ideal, but they’re here now. She’s got to get the book. It won’t be long before the police show up, but she should have a few minutes. The station is at least five minutes away. The safe is exactly where she remembers. With the pulsing white glow, she doesn’t even need the flashlight to see the numbers. She twists left, twists right, left again, right again. The safe clicks open easily. Julie opens the door and grabs everything she can feel inside. Cash, attached to a deposit slip, the ancient newspaper clipping of Nell as Cotton Queen. Julie pauses for a second when she sees a more recent newspaper article announcing the opening of Toby’s gallery. But there’s no diary in the safe. Nothing even resembling a book.

  It isn’t here.

  “Jules!” August shouts over the shrieking of the alarm. “We’ve got to go!”

  But she stands there, staring into the safe, where she was so sure they would find the diary. She’s failed. This whole stupid plan was for nothing.

  August strides into the tiny back room and grabs her arm. She slams the safe door, spins the lock, and they rush out of the flower shop. They’re on the porch, the back door standing wide open behind them, when Julie’s cell phone starts to ring from her back pocket. She checks the number. After all this time, she still recognizes it: Nell’s home phone. “Shit,” Julie says. Nell knows. She thinks of ignoring it, but she can’t bring herself to do it.

  “Nell. Hi.”

  “Jules Portland,” Nell says, her voice stern but barely audible over the pulsing alarm. “Where exactly are you, right now?”

  “Now?” Julie asks. She has to walk closer to the car to hear her own voice.

  “I know you broke into my shop. I have security cameras. Does it even mean anything if I say I’m disappointed in you?” It does, actually, stings a little. Not the way it would have, ten years ago. “You’ve been in town all of, what, twenty-four hours, and you’re breaking into my place of business?”

  “Are you going to have us arrested?

  “I should.”

  “We didn’t take anything. And I’m disappointed in you too,” Julie says. “I know you have the diary. Why not just give it to us?”

  “You don’t want it, Jules.”

  “So you do have it. Where?” Julie looks around, waiting for the police sirens. “Nell, are the cops coming?”

  “Of course not. I saw you and August on my laptop, and I told the police it was all a misunderstanding, that I’d set the damned thing off myself. God knows why.” Julie breathes a sigh of r
elief. “The diary is at my house. It’s always been at my house. You think I’d keep something like that in a public place? But I saw that look on your face today, and something told me you might try to come on in the shop and see for yourself. There’s a reason I never told you about it. Like I said, you don’t want it.”

  “Yes, I do,” Julie says, an edge to her voice. All of this time, for all of these years, Nell has had a part of Reba that Julie has been without, and that seems unforgivable now.

  “It would only hurt you, sweetie,” Nell says, her voice suddenly soft. “It would hurt August too. You both are better off without it.”

  The warnings only make Julie want it more. “Nell, you can’t…keep this from me. I loved her. She was my best friend.”

  “I’m sorry. It was for the best then, and it’s for the best now. There are…things you didn’t know about Reba. Things she didn’t want you to know. You and August need to shake this town off your boots and leave the past where it belongs—in the past. Move on, the both of you.”

  “We can’t,” Julie says firmly. “We can’t move on, not when neither one of us has the whole story. We need that book. We need to know. I’m not a child, Nell. You can’t protect me anymore. Please. Please, give me the book.” August is beside the car now, watching her, waiting to see how this all turns out. His fingers tap an anxious rhythm against the passenger-side window.

  “Jules, you’re not going to like what you read. And poor August isn’t going to like it either. You’re doing yourselves a disservice here.”

  Julie can’t imagine what could be so shocking about Reba, other than what she already knows. What she found out all those years ago. It doesn’t matter, though.

  “We’re not leaving Lawrence Mill without it. We can’t. Whatever we have to do.”

  “I should just burn the damned thing,” Nell says. “Probably should have done that ten years ago.” Julie considers the possibility of Reba’s diary disappearing now, when they’re so close. Going up in smoke.

  “Yeah, you could,” she says. “But would you do that to me? I used to confide in you. I sought advice from you. I trusted you.”

  “And look at how much that meant, since you up and left and never looked back. I don’t owe you this, Jules.”

  “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have fallen out of touch like that, I know. But, Nell, please. Knowing the truth, reading that diary. It means so much. More than anything. Please.”

  Nell sighs. “You’ll regret this. I’ll probably regret this. But I can see you’re every bit as stubborn as you always were. I’ll give you the book. For better or worse. I’ll bring it by the shop tomorrow. You can pick it up there.”

  Julie looks at the clock on her phone. Eleven. It’s not too late. “Now,” she says, her voice shaky. She doesn’t want to push her luck, but she also doesn’t want to give Nell the chance to change her mind. She looks up at August, and he nods. “Nell, we need it now. We can come to you, or you can bring it to us.”

  “Jesus Christ. How did I already know you were going to say that? Give me ten minutes, and I’ll be there. And for God’s sake, Jules, get back in my shop and turn the alarm off. Let me give you the code.”

  36

  REBA’S DIARY, 1997

  It was the hottest summer on record in Lawrence Mill, and even in September, the permeating heat seeped into everything. If heat really comes in waves, like the weatherman says, then these waves were so thick as to be almost visible—pulsing, fluid snakes with hot red tongues flicking.

  The air conditioner in Nell’s couldn’t keep up. Nell and I had been working to get all of the fresh flowers back into the cooler when Jules stopped in after her Saturday-morning play practice.

  “Oh no,” she muttered when she saw us rushing back and forth with vases in our arms. She backed away from the door.

  “Jules!” I said.

  “Perfect timing,” Nell’s muffled voice called from inside the cooler’s open door. “Air’s out. Grab a vase.”

  The brown window-unit air conditioner was probably older than Nell, Jules, and me combined. It perched uselessly quiet on the windowsill.

  We moved all of the fresh flowers—the ones that normally adorn various small tables around the room—into the safety of the cooler.

  “Too hot in here for these. Only artificial arrangements on display until we get rid of this piece of crap,” Nell says, gesturing to the monster in the window. Then she looked at Jules. “Well, well. Good to see you again. It’s been what, three or four months now?”

  Jules laughed. “It’s only been a few weeks!”

  “Feels like longer,” she said. I nodded in agreement. “Guess I miss having another loudmouth around here.”

  Jules is only a loudmouth compared to me. I couldn’t tell if I was being insulted. I had the Yellow Pages splayed open to the section labeled Air Conditioners. Nell heaved herself onto the empty stool next to me.

  The best part of Nell is that she doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her. It’s a trait that Jules and I both admire. She never lies, except about her hair color. Her hair is short and straight, cut to match the latest style. And it’s the color of mandarin oranges. It’s a shade that wouldn’t have passed for natural even when Nell was a girl. She would tell you it was natural, though, if you asked. “Always was a ginger,” she’d say, laughing. And we all pretended to accept it as truth.

  “So tell us about this play you’re starring in. Again,” Nell said, leaning over me as she flipped through the phone book. “Oh, that’s the place. Steve Mallard runs it. Hopefully, I can talk that old bastard into giving me a deal on a new unit.”

  “The play is going okay,” Jules said. “Lots of practice. It’s Romeo and Juliet.”

  “Jules hates Shakespeare,” I couldn’t help but add.

  “Romeo, Romeo,” Nell said dramatically. “How can anyone hate Shakespeare? Tell me more.”

  Jules shrugged. “Not much more to tell, really.”

  “Tell her who’s playing Romeo.”

  “Oh! Reba’s old crush. Brandon Lomax.”

  “Uh-oh,” Nell said. “Reba, you still haven’t hit on that boy? He’s Jen Lomax’s son, right? And Jules, you’re just going to go around kissing the boy Reba’s had her eye on for ages?”

  “I don’t mind,” I said with a little shrug and a smile. And I really didn’t mind. It’s true that I used to have a crush on Brandon. With his hazel eyes and glasses and wavy hair, he’s attractive in a bookish, unpopular way. I never acted on it, though, and maybe that was for the best, because my desire for him seemed to have melted away in the summer heat. Ever since that day alone in the flower shop with August, he was the one I couldn’t get off my mind.

  “Deliveries?” Toby’s gravelly voice made Jules and me jump. With the door propped open, we hadn’t heard him come in. His jeans were ripped at the knee, and he wore a white V-neck T-shirt, his light-brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. His face was stubbly—not freshly shaven, but not yet grown into a beard.

  “Jesus Christ,” Jules muttered, rolling her eyes. “I forgot you’re working here now.”

  “Yeah, and I thought you weren’t. What are you doing here, trying to ruin my day?” He looked around, nodding at Nell and looking me up and down in a less-than-subtle manner. “Reba,” he said. He made my name sound dirty as it slid out of his mouth, and I knew I was blushing.

  “This might be a foreign concept to you, Tobes, but these are my friends. I can drop in anytime I want.” Jules smirked, knowing that the nickname would grate on his nerves.

  “Whatever. Never call me that again.”

  Nell dialed the number on the cordless phone, then looked up, the phone balanced between her ear and the cushion of her shoulder. “This is a disaster. Toby, while you’re here, maybe you can help the girls move some things around.”

  “I charge extra for heavy lifting,�
� Toby grumbled. “What do you need?”

  I looked away from him, and something outside the window caught my eye just as Nell got an answer. She started chatting, gesturing with her hands as though Steve Mallard could see her through the phone as well as hear her. “Be right back,” I whispered, then slipped out the open back door.

  August was waiting outside. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I told you I would visit you again,” he said. It had been two full weeks since he’d shown me his photographs.

  “You shouldn’t be here now. I’m working, and Nell and Jules are here and…you can’t be here too.” I backed up against the wooden frame of the building, making sure that I was out of sight. That he was out of sight. I couldn’t help but smile.

  “I wanted to…well, see you, I guess. Away from school.” August stepped closer to me, too close for daylight.

  “Another time,” I said. I hoped he could hear the regret in my voice.

  “Reba, I like you. I’d like to get to know you. I get it, how things are here. But I don’t care what people think…and I’m kind of hoping you don’t, either. I want to see you again, soon.” There was that dimple again, and I knew he was pretending not to care too much about my response.

  I don’t know why I said it, other than the simple truth is that I wanted to see him too. “Okay. Meet me by the river, here, behind the shop. Tonight.”

  “The river,” he repeated. “Okay.”

  “Later though, it has to be late.”

  “Later is good,” he said, and he seemed to be breathing a little quicker. Maybe it was the heat or the fact that he was so close to me or the anticipatory look in his eyes, but I seemed to be breathing faster too.

  I was a wreck when I went back inside, my face flushed, my movements erratic as I worked beside Jules. This new, wonderful secret was filling me up, and I knew I would burst if I didn’t do something, say something. I dropped a plastic vase and jumped as it clattered around the room.

  “Jules,” I said finally. “I have to tell you something.” I wanted to trust her, hoped I could.