“C’mon, Josh, let’s draw on the counter where Aunt Jo can help you with your letters.”
“He’s fine in here,” Flint protested, annoyed at being caught in fatherly incompetence with a kid who wasn’t even his own. His language skills had deteriorated from years of hanging out in bars.
Jo grabbed a new pencil from the desk and helped Josh out of the chair, ignoring Flint’s protest. “Did George Bob give you the go ahead for the back room?”
“I’m not sure it’s a wise idea to open up when I’m not—”
“Mary Jean is great with the customers, and she needs the tips. You’re not even paying her,” she pointed out. “She’s doing it for Eddie and the guys. If we had an espresso machine, you could make a fortune in the evenings.”
“I’m not paying her?” Shocked, Flint got up and followed her to the front. “I could have the feds down my throat for that. That’s all I need, one more fight with the fu—” He cut himself off before he completed that word.
“Nobody cares what we do up here,” she said with a dismissive wave. “As long as Mary Jean doesn’t complain, who’s to know? You’re not running Starbucks.”
“You have no idea how…frigging…wrong that is,” he yelled. “It’s that kind of lame-assed thinking that gets everybody concerned in deep shit.”
“Mommy says shit is a bad word,” Josh said, climbing up to reach the donut case. “Daddy says damn and he’s going to hell,” he continued in the ensuing silence.
Jo giggled and dried off a butt-ugly green dish from a stack she’d been hand washing. Flint rubbed his face. He wanted to back out of here as fast as his boots would carry him, but he had nowhere to run these days. Besides, she ought to be the one to go, not him. Knowing this was his place made him feel better.
“I’m already in hell, so I don’t reckon you ought to try out any bad words in front of your mama,” he advised, lifting the boy off the counter and back to a seat. “If you’re hungry, we have bananas.”
“Yeah, I wanna banana.” He looked up at Flint expectantly. “You got any little boys I can play with?”
“I have two boys. Adam is twelve and Johnnie is eleven. Maybe you’ll meet them when they come to visit.” He’d missed most of their childhoods, and at this rate, he’d miss their adolescence, too.
“You got any big boys I can play with?” Jo murmured, brushing past him to hand Josh an apple instead of a banana.
Her aphrodisiac cologne filled his head with images of rose petals, bubble baths, and tan lines. “Am I big enough?” He lifted one eyebrow suggestively. Out of self defense, he was already reverting to his old ways.
She slanted him a wicked look from beneath long dark lashes. “Oh, you’re big enough, all right. The question is, are you good enough?” she purred, running a finger down his chest and setting it on fire.
“Good ain’t hardly the word for it,” he promised.
Cursing inwardly that he’d let her push his buttons, Flint leaned against the counter at a safer distance, only to be distracted by the lift of Joella’s breasts as she reached for more dishes in the cabinet over the stove. He’d been within inches of having all that in his palms… He breathed a sigh of relief when the front door creaked open to let in a customer.
He had to be out of his mind to even consider discussing his ugly quest with Joella, but she was just the sort of person who would know RJ. He had to find out if his partner had plagiarized those lyrics they’d sold to the record company before he got his kids home and raised their hopes.
Flint waited until Jo finished pouring coffee for their customer. When she reached to take down a purple platter, he asked casually. “You know a guy called RJ Peters used to play around here?”
The platter dropped from Jo’s hand to hit the stove with a splintering crash. She stood there wide-eyed, not bothering to glance at the destruction. “Why d’ya ask?”
Wondering what the hell that was about, Flint checked to make certain Josh was still safely in his seat. Then he knelt down to pick up the pieces. He had about ten seconds to figure out if she liked the lying cheat or wanted RJ’s head smashed like the platter.
“I’m trying to make RJ live up to his obligations,” he explained, figuring he was already in deep shit and might as well dig deeper.
“Well, you find a shotgun and a lawyer, and I’ll do that for you.” Without another word of explanation, she left him picking up china while she grabbed Josh and headed for the door. “We’re going for a walk,” she called as she departed.
Well, hell, Flint thought as he cut his finger on a porcelain splinter. Looked like ol’ RJ had left an entire trail of shattered lives behind him. And at least one heart.
Six
“Swing low, sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home...” Joella sang as she pushed the porch swing with her toe, peeled potatoes, and admired the purple rhododendron blooms spilling over the rail. Her mother’s house was way out in the woods where no one would hear or care if she sang her heart out or cried a river.
“You ought to sing in church more often.” Marie wandered out to the rough planked porch with a glass in her hand. Once as tall as Jo, she’d shrunk some with time and ill-health, but she still stood straight and feisty, cigarette in hand despite doctor’s orders.
Her hard-living mother hadn’t touched alcohol in years, but Jo automatically eyed the glass with suspicion before deciding it looked like lemonade. Her mother’s current situation was enough to cause anyone to pick up a bottle and start drowning. She admired Marie’s strength in avoiding temptation. She should take lessons.
Jo shrugged. “They sing boring old songs here. I’m thinking of going down to Asheville and looking for a church that does contemporary music.”
“Don’t be silly.” Marie sat on the swing and picked up a potato and peeler. “You don’t belong down there. You belong here where people know you. I thought you’d learned that by now. You’re all the time trying to be bigger than you are.”
“I’m a pretty big girl, Mama. I couldn’t afford new clothes if I get much bigger.” Jo shoved aside the slight with twisted humor. It was the only way to take her mother when she went down this path, which was at least once a visit. Her mother spoke from experience, after all. “That reminds me, the kids need summer clothes, and Evan’s hoarding money again. Maybe I could buy some material with my next check and you could make it up into some little shorts and things.”
Her mother had worked as a sewing machine operator in the samples department at the mill for years, despite the crippling pain and fatigue of hepatitis. It had taken the lay-off of half the work force last year to end her decades of hard work.
Social Security had turned down her disability request, and the unemployment benefits expired next month. Jo had hoped maybe her mother could take up making clothes for others—just enough to cover her COBRA insurance until they could hire a lawyer to help with the disability application. The house was paid for, and she and Amy could provide groceries for a while.
Once COBRA ran out, however, no other insurance company would take her on. Without continued treatment, the doctor said Marie would die.
There had to be a way—Jo just hadn’t found it yet. Her mama was only fifty-five.
“Evan is being smart about their money.” Marie brushed off Jo’s implied criticism. “Things are bad out there, and he’s trying not to go into debt.”
Jo cooled her anger at her brother-in-law by envisioning dumping the pot of potato peelings on Evan’s shiny blond head. The man was a control freak who would stab his own mother-in-law in the back, but Marie had old-fashioned values and would never find fault with a man who provided for his family.
“Evan laid you off, even knowing you need insurance,” Jo protested. “He won’t pay for daycare so Amy can take a job and use her education. It’s all about him.”
“That’s you talking, not Amy. You just don’t understand men. You should have known that fast-talking Randy was just using you.”
Li
ke Jo’s first boyfriend and so-called business manager, He-Who-Should-Rot-In-Hell. Any reference to that dangerous episode went unspoken, but the fear was there in her mother’s eyes.
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Cutting the potato into quarters and nearly taking off her finger with the viciousness of her slice, Jo decided they had enough potatoes. She picked up the pot and carried it into the house.
Her mother had good reason to question Jo’s poor choices. She was not only a bad judge of men, but it seemed she’d recently turned coward. She’d waited until the lunch rush had started before taking Josh back to the café. That wasn’t like her. She should have waited to see what that no-good, cheating, rotten…
Which was why she hadn’t hung around. She couldn’t think of Randy—RJ!—Peters without looking for a rope and a gun. RJ! For heaven’s sake alive, who did the miserable rotten cur think he was? Randolph John wasn’t good enough?
He’d been good old Randy while he was playing with the Buzzards. He’d left for Nashville and the music circuit a couple of years ago, but until she’d heard through the grapevine in January that he’d finally sold an album, she hadn’t fully comprehended she’d been dumped along with the band. Stupidly, she’d had high hopes that his visits and sweet promises meant his heart was growing fonder with his absence. She’d just been waiting for him to keep his word to take her with him.
She didn’t know who was stupider, her for believing him, or Randy for turning his back on the people who’d got him where he was today.
The phone rang at the same time that Amy’s SUV chugged up the gravel drive. Balancing the potato pot on her hip, Jo picked up the cordless on the way through the shabby living room to the even shabbier kitchen. “Jo here.”
“Has Amy arrived yet? I have some new clients in my office, and I’ve promised we’d feed them. I need to talk to her when she gets there.”
“Hello, Evan, good to hear from you, Evan. How’s life treating you these days, Evan?” Jo slammed the pot on the stove, added more water and some salt, and turned on the burner. Evan’s pomposity was another of the traits that made her skin crawl. “Have you moved all the mill jobs to Mexico yet, Evan?”
She heard the kids shouting to their grandmother and waited to hear if Amy would come in. She glanced at the old Seth Thomas wall clock. Her sister was running late. She’d probably go on down the road. Amy hated to be late for anything. That was just fine, because Jo had no intention of handing dickhead over to Amy to ruin her evening out. He was perfectly capable of feeding clients in Asheville. He did it all the time. He just hated that Amy was taking classes instead of waiting on him.
“Just let me talk to my wife, dammit, Joella. This doesn’t have to be the Spanish Inquisition.”
“Inquisition! Big word. I’ll have to go look that up. I’ll be right back.” She set the phone on the counter and went out to greet the kids.
“Who was that on the phone, dear?” Marie tickled Louisa’s belly beneath her too-small shirt. Josh had already taken off for the apple tree.
“Just an encyclopedia salesman. I left him dangling.”
So, she had a little problem with the truth. The problem with truth was that it sometimes got in the way of justice and hurt people who didn’t deserve to be hurt. Every once in a while, she’d like the good people to win.
And she figured whatever Flint had intended to say about Randy John Peters wouldn’t have much to do with good people winning. Not unless he handed her a gun and told her it was okay to use it.
***
On light feet, Joella raced down the fire escape steps of her apartment over the café on Friday morning. She didn’t think Flint had figured out yet that she was his tenant. Some surprises were better left to time.
Humidity met the night breeze in a fine mist that blended with the gray light of dawn here in the alley between the café and the hardware store. She liked the isolated feeling of having the town to herself for these few minutes before she went to work.
A new day gave her a chance to start over. She’d kicked herself all night. She hadn’t given Flint a chance to explain. Maybe he wanted to take Randy down, too. She ought to at least give him the benefit of the doubt.
She was just a little sensitive on the subject of the man she’d invested the best three years of her life in. She thought the one damned thing she did right was to know people, and Randy had shattered her illusions. She’d believed him when he’d said he was building a career on the road. She even believed him when he said he was too busy or too tired or traveling too late to call her often. She’d let him into her house and into her bed whenever his circuit had come back through here.
He’d told her he lived for the days and nights with her. Just last Christmas he’d been telling her how he loved her. He must have known then that he’d sold the album. Jeez, you’d think she was eighteen all over again. She must have beans for brains to believe Randy actually liked her rhymes as much as her bed.
Great track record, Jo. He-Who-Should-Rot-In-Hell had taught her stage fright and Randy-RJ-Ratfink had taught her not to trust a lying conniving music man. And now she had to work for one. Well, at least she knew better than to trust Flint. She just needed to think with her head instead of her hormones for a change. Easier said than done.
She stepped out of the alley into the early morning of Main Street, Northfork, North Carolina. She loved the picturesque brick storefronts with their sagging signs and wood benches strategically located under awnings. The side of a mountain didn’t leave a lot of flat land for building, so the highway between the shops was narrow and the sidewalks tight. Tourists had to park in the lots on either side of town, or on the residential streets that wound up into the hollows. Foot traffic, the big city planners had called it. Good for business.
But tourists came up only on weekends. To survive, businesses needed a thriving local population. Since the mill started laying off, the local economy had flattened. She could see evidence of it already in the FOR SALE signs on houses, the closed gift shop, and the empty pharmacy that used to always be there on the corner. Asheville was less than an hour away and people went down there on the weekends to do their shopping now, to the big box stores that could offer cheaper goods—made in China.
She couldn’t do anything about the mill, but she had lots of ideas about other ways to boost business. The big MusicFest the first week of August was one of them. And if Flynn Clinton really was an ex-member of the Barn Boys, then he might be just the man they needed on the committee.
Speak of the devil… There he stood, contemplating the flying fuchsia pig in front of George Bob’s insurance office. He had his fingers stashed in his front jeans pockets and his head tilted as if in conversation with the pig on its pedestal. Jo admired his long legs in boot-cut jeans and smiled in memory of his dancing. Her boss was one hell of a sexy man. It was a pity she wasn’t trusting men these days.
She’d have to pry his story out of him sometime. His story, and nothing more, she reminded herself. And she’d take any tale he told with a grain of salt. She planned on learning cynicism before her thirtieth birthday.
She sauntered across the street to stand beside him. “Impressive, isn’t she? That’s Dot’s creation. She sells ceramic artwork, so she’s a professional at this kind of thing. The purple pig the kids painted isn’t quite so neat, but it’s cute.”
“What the hell is it?” he asked in obvious confusion. “An ashtray?”
“It isn’t anything. It’s art. Knock knock.” She tapped his temple with her knuckles. She liked that she had to reach a bit to do so. She liked the heated look he shot her as well. She needed to be reminded she still had what it takes, even if she didn’t plan to use it. “Where have you been? Everybody’s doing them. I think Chicago started it with the cows. We can’t do anything quite so fancy, but if it makes money for the festival, who cares?”
“How do they make money?” He leaned his head back to look the fuchsia pig in its checker boarded eye. “It’s
the ugliest damned thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Folk art. People like whimsical. We take bids on the pigs all summer and start the auction where the bids leave off at the festival in August. Cute, huh?”
“People are going to put these things in their houses?” He shook his head in disbelief, and started across the street to the café.
Jo stayed in stride with him. “Or their gardens. Whatever. Will you take Sally’s pig? It will look adorable by the front door.”
He shoved the key in the lock. “If everyone else is doing it and I don’t have to keep it forever, reckon I can give it a try. It won’t trip any customers, will it?”
“That’s why George Bob asked for the one on the pedestal, but you’d have to be blind to trip over one. I’ll call Sally. She’ll be delighted.”
“Has she got anyone special?” Flint asked, not looking at her as he flipped on the lights.
Jo tried not to reel in shock. This handsome cowboy who could have any woman he wanted was interested in little Sally? Boy, she really was losing her judgment about people. “No one special. She sings in the choir at First Baptist. You might go up there on Sunday if you’re out to make an impression.”
“Better class of people in church than in bars,” he agreed, apparently forgetting where he’d met Jo.
She contemplated socking him over the back of his oblivious head with a coffee mug, but he was a man and clueless. “You’ll see some of the same people in both places,” she said with what she considered great restraint.
He regarded her tight expression with suspicion. “Right. If you’ll start the coffee, I’ll go back and unlock for the delivery truck.”
They were stepping around each other as if his mention of RJ yesterday had planted a mine field. Maybe it had. Figuring she’d better wait until they both had some caffeine before approaching him about Randy, Jo tightened her apron bow and sauntered back to the counter.
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