“Sharene!” Camellia exclaimed, steadying her footing. “Fantastic timing. I have Shelby’s comp cards and she looks amaz–“
“Leave,” Sharene hissed, causing Camellia to reel back. “Take those ridiculous cards and your fancy lifestyle back to New York and stay away from my daughter.”
With jaw dropped, Camellia searched Sharene’s drawn face for an explanation but all she found was loathing. “Sharene, I don’t understand. I thought you and Shelby were going to move to New York together. The timing of selling the diner is so perfect.”
“Is it?” Sharene’s lips curled into a snarl. “You are so consumed with what you want, you never stop to see the affect your actions are having on everyone else.”
Camellia was horrified. “Excuse me? What are you talking about?”
“I keep close tabs on my daughter. I know where she goes on dates and I know what magazines she reads. You singlehandedly destroyed Flair with your tunnel vision. It was all about you – to hell with the employees counting on a paycheck. You were going to do what you wanted to do, no matter the consequences. But not with my daughter.”
Camellia took a deep breath, steadying both her anger and the whirlwind of dialog playing out in her head. “You misunderstand me,” she said, having regained her composure. “I sincerely value your daughter. I would never hurt her.”
“You already have.”
“How?”
“By making her believe she has a future outside Markleeville.”
“She does. Why are you so eager to keep her here?”
Sharlene’s distorted face softened, turning downward like a bloodhound. “Because I need her more than you do.” She opened the diner door and motioned Camellia inside.
Half an hour later, Camellia emerged from the diner, her eyes rimmed red. The dim gray light of the evening sky filtered downtown Markleeville, making it look as lonely as it felt. She stumbled along the sidewalk, not concerned with direction or the cold wind biting at her hands and face.
“Camellia?” The sound of her name pulled Camellia from her daze. She glanced around and saw Lisa standing in the doorway of her shop, waving her over, her expression one of concern. Camellia met her eyes and started to cry. “Hold on honey, I’m coming for you,” Lisa called out, scurrying across the street. Upon reaching Camellia, Lisa put an arm around her shoulder and led her back to the store. “It’s far too cold for man or beast out here today,” she said. “A perfect occasion to dip into my brandy stash.”
The store was empty, save for Deb, the owner of Do or Dye. Camellia recalled how she had practically run for her life from Deb’s salon, making her cry harder.
“Sweetie, what is it?” Lisa asked, sitting Camellia in a chair next to the dressing room and disappearing into the back, reemerging in seconds with a brandy bottle and paper cups.
“I’m an awful person,” Camellia sobbed into her hands. “An awful person with no life.”
Lisa and Deb exchanged looks. “I think we’re going to need more than a half-full bottle of brandy,” Deb declared.
“We need Doc’s,” Lisa affirmed.
“And how.”
The women grabbed Camellia’s hands and pulled her to her feet. “I don’t need a doctor,” she insisted, as the tears continued to run down her face, cutting paths through her foundation.
“This one you do,” Lisa assured, pulling Camellia out the back door and loading her into a red pickup truck. She climbed into the driver’s seat, Deb jumped in on the other side, and Lisa took off, her tires spitting gravel in their wake. One stop down the interstate, they landed at Doc’s Roadhouse.
Once the ladies had vodka in their glasses, and Deb convinced the bartender to leave the rest of the bottle on their table, Camellia started talking.
“I thought I had it all figured out,” she said, frowning at her glass. “Shelby was my way back in. My redemption. She was going to take the modeling world by storm, and as the one who discovered her and molded her, I would be welcomed back into the society that had once shunned me.”
“Why would you want to go back to them?” Lisa questioned, dipping into the bowl of salted peanuts. “They sound like a bunch of rat bastards.”
Camellia cracked a smile. “They really are. Most of them, anyway.”
“So why do you care?” Deb asked gruffly.
“I don’t know,” Camellia admitted, sipping her drink. “It doesn’t matter now. Shelby won’t be going to New York anytime soon. Sharene has breast cancer.”
Lisa and Deb gasped. “Oh that poor woman,” Deb said, shaking her head. “She’s had it so tough, losing her husband so young, and having to raise a daughter by herself while running that diner day in and day out. How’s Shelby taking the news?”
“To be honest, I’m not sure she knows. Sharene confronted me outside the diner, telling me I was taking her daughter from her. I don’t think she was planning on announcing it.” Camellia wiped at her nose with the bar napkin. “I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I really didn’t know.”
Lisa patted Camellia’s hand. “Of course you didn’t. How could you have? Fear makes us do crazy things, honey. From yelling at a perfectly nice stranger to putting all our hopes and dreams into one girl’s modeling career.”
Camellia stared at her drink. It was true. She had put her entire career in the hands of an eighteen-year-old girl. “I don’t know what to do now,” she admitted.
“You can be a friend to Shelby,” Deb suggested in a kind manner. “She doesn’t have many friends.”
Camellia looked up at the women, stunned by this news. “Really? She’s so friendly.”
Lisa spit a piece of ice back into her glass. “You know how girls can be: gorgeous child, standing taller than everyone in her class, not a mean bone in her perfectly proportioned body.”
“They shut her out.”
Deb grabbed the bottle and refilled their glasses. “Like a stray cat.”
“Which explains why she’s so tight with her mom,” Lisa continued. “Sharene was her only companion for years.”
“And now?” Camellia asked.
“She’s been dating Justin for a couple of years,” Lisa said. “He’s a good kid. Runs the family farm.”
“And then she met you,” Deb said, waving her glass at Camellia. “Never seen her happier.”
Camellia’s heart lightened at that. Until now, she hadn’t considered that Shelby had become more to her than a client. But she had. She felt at ease around the girl, even able to let her guard down, to some extent, anyway. Shelby Jenkins may have been an unlikely friend – a young, small-town girl with no life experience – but she had become a friend just the same. And that friendship had been key in helping her adjust to Markleeville.
A thought stirred in Camellia and she glanced up at the two women, who were starting to look a little fuzzy through her buzz. “I’ve been kind of a shithead to you both. Why are you being so nice to me?”
Deb let out a whoop and slapped the table. “Sweetie, you were kind of a shithead, but Lisa and I don’t operate by holding grudges. This is a small town. We have to stick together.”
“Besides,” Lisa added, throwing back the rest of her drink. “We know what you’ve been through. That would turn any of us into shitheads; at least temporarily.”
Camellia cocked her head, her eyebrows furrowed. “You do?”
“Like I said, it’s a small town,” Deb said, signaling the bartender. “Who’s up for another bottle?”
TWENTY-ONE
Camellia didn’t remember much about getting home that night, but when she woke up the next morning, she was fully clothed on the couch, nestled under a faux-fur throw. She tried sitting up, but the sensation of being punched repeatedly in the head put her back down again. Her mouth tasted stale with a tinge of old vomit. She needed water, but there was no way she was going to try sitting up again. Her stomach felt like it had twisted around itself.
She tried closing her eyes to shut out the brightness, but lyin
g there with her eyes closed made her nauseated, so she opened them again, covering part of her face with the blanket instead. What time is it? she wondered. Where’s Henry?
There were footsteps on the stairs. Henry’s footsteps, solid and rhythmic. “Henry,” she murmured, placing a shaky hand on her pounding head.
“There’s my party girl,” he said brightly. “How’s the head?”
She moaned. “Hurts.”
“I’ll bet. When the ladies carted you in here last night, you barely knew your own name.”
“Deb and Lisa?” Camellia searched for the memory but came up empty. “They had to help me into the house?”
Henry retrieved a washcloth from a pile of laundry on the kitchen table. He wet it then placed it on Camellia forehead. “More like carried you.” He sat on the edge of the couch and stroked Camellia’s cheek.
“Stop it, that hurts,” she whined.
He grinned. “I didn’t know you made some friends. They seemed pretty nice.”
“I hadn’t. Not until last night anyway.”
“So are they nice?”
“They’re so nice.” Camellia unfolded the washcloth and placed it over her entire face. “Henry, a lot has happened since yesterday.”
“I can only imagine.”
Camellia detected a hint of mockery and gave Henry a weak pinch on the arm. “I’m serious. I think life in Markleeville is about to change.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Not like this.”
By evening, Camellia’s hangover had mostly subsided, save for a dull headache. She had managed to shower and get dressed, tying up her air-dried hair with a silk scarf. Henry, having left late for the hospital in order to first tend to his wife’s disastrous state, was working late to stay on top of his patient load. To show her appreciation, Camellia decided to attempt a home-cooked meal of penne pasta with marinara sauce and crusty Italian bread. Her apron was spattered with tomato paste she had forced loose from the can, making her look like the loser of a bloody battle. With the sauce finally simmering on the stove, she filled a large pot with water, generously salted it, and set it on the back burner to boil, placing the lid firmly. She wiped her hands on one of the apron’s few clean spots and sighed.
She had been in a state of melancholy all day. How much was due to the hangover, she couldn’t say. But she guessed come tomorrow, when her body was once again clear of any residual alcohol, she would be feeling the exact same way. Sharene had breast cancer. Shelby would be devastated by the news. And she had nothing to look forward to except for a big, fancy house that suddenly seemed so garish and pointless.
She had known women who had nothing in their lives but their homes, from spacious apartments in the city to stretching summer homes in the Hamptons, and they threw themselves into making their spaces magazine-worthy retreats. They invented reasons to showcase their surroundings, from half-hearted dinner parties to hosting fundraisers, so other socialites would be forced into their homes to admire the splendor.
Camellia did not want that to be her future. But with her dreams of bringing Shelby to New York quashed, at least until Sharene had recovered, which could easily take a year or longer, Camellia had no clue what her future held. And this state of limbo felt like a vacuum, sucking her into nothingness.
The doorbell rang. Camellia put her hands to her head to check her scarf, forgetting about the signs of war on her apron, and opened the door. Shelby collapsed into her arms.
The sauce had burned and the pasta never made it into the water. Camellia sat on the sofa with the dirty apron still on, holding Shelby’s head as the girl sobbed into her lap. Henry, who had arrived only moments after Shelby, added logs to the fire before driving two towns over to fetch Shelby’s favorite Chinese food.
The three of them sat in a row on the sofa, working through their chicken fried rice in silence. The only sounds permeating the room were the clicking of chopsticks, the crackling fire, and Shelby’s intermittent sniffles and quick catches of breath. And then, as if a switch had turned on, Shelby started talking.
“I should have known something was wrong,” she whimpered, staring down at the take-out box. “She hasn’t been herself for weeks. I let her convince me that some new diet was responsible for her weight loss.”
“Is losing weight a symptom of breast cancer?” Camellia asked, trying to remember an article Flair had run on the topic a couple of years back.
“It is when it’s spread to other parts of the body.” Shelby began to cry again.
Camellia put an arm around the girl and pulled her close. “Oh Shelby, I didn’t realize it was that advanced.”
“Stage four. She never got it checked out. ‘Too busy at the diner’ was how she justified neglecting her health. And I just found out her aunt died of it. So it’s in the family. It’s in the family and she didn’t get it checked out.” Her swollen eyes managed to produce more tears, which Camellia wiped away with a tissue pulled from a full box wedged between them.
“I imagine her oncologist has recommended an aggressive treatment plan,” Henry said.
Shelby blew her nose and dropped the wadded tissue into her lap. “Yes, but she’s not doing it.” She grabbed another tissue and held it against her eyelids, her body convulsing.
Camellia and Henry exchanged worried looks. “Why not?” Camellia questioned.
“She doesn’t want it,” Shelby stammered, as her body continued to shake. “She doesn’t think it will make enough of a difference to go through it.” She peered at Camellia through a red eye. “The cancer is in her bones now.”
“Oh baby,” Camellia cooed, rocking Shelby back and forth. She pushed away a strand of hair that was covering Shelby’s face. “Would you like to stay here tonight?”
Shelby shook her head. “No, she needs me with her. I just don’t want her to see me like this.”
“Of course not,” Camellia agreed. She looked up at Henry, who was clearing away their half-eaten dinner. “Would you get her some Ibuprofen and a glass of water? I’m going to get a few supplies and freshen her up a bit.”
After Shelby had left, cleaned up but still looking physically worn, Camellia and Henry sat up in bed in the darkness, neither able to sleep.
“I keep wondering about the diner,” Camellia mused. “Sharene’s real reason for selling it. Was it to pay medical bills? Or to ensure Shelby had a nest egg to live off of after she’s gone?”
“The only person who can answer that is Sharene,” Henry said, adjusting his pillow and turning to face Camellia. “It’s a sad situation.”
“It’s beyond sad. It’s tragic. We have to do something, Henry. We have to help them.”
“Agreed,” he said, reaching for her hand. “What would you like to do?”
“If she doesn’t get treatment, she’s going to die, right?”
“Yes. Sooner rather than later. I don’t blame her. When the cancer is that advanced, the only thing treatment is going to do is prolong her life, and there’s no saying for how long. It can be a very painful and time-consuming way to spend your final months.”
“Months? Is that all she has left?”
“I’m not an oncologist, but based on what Shelby said, that’s my best guess.”
She exhaled, staring up at the dim ceiling. “I think I know what to do.” She smirked as the idea that came out of nowhere took hold of her. Just when she thought her future held no promise, she was proven wrong again.
TWENTY-TWO
Monday morning, just as Deb was flipping the closed sign to open, Camellia burst into Do or Dye. “I need a haircut,” she pleaded.
“’Bout damn time, girlie.” She led Camellia to the first chair next to the front window and tied a black cape around her neck. “You here for my Markleeville Mullet Special?”
“Oh yes,” Camellia said, enjoying the sarcastic banter that Deb did so well. “A girl can’t be all business all the time.”
“So true. However, before I start chopping, wh
at do you
really want?”
“I want a pixie.”
Deb gulped. “Really? You don’t want me to shorten it in stages so it’s not such a big change?”
“I want the change,” Camellia said, studying her face in the mirror. “I need low maintenance.”
“That’s about as low maintenance as you can get.” Deb shrugged her broad shoulders. “Okay, brave one, let’s head over to the shampoo bowl, shall we?”
A half hour later, after cutting and gelling and blow-drying, Deb removed the cape and turned Camellia back to the mirror for the moment of truth.
“It’s stunning,” Deb said.
It was true. The super short haircut flattered Camellia’s elegant bone structure. Camellia smiled widely into the mirror at Deb. “I love it,” she said.
“Of course you do,” Deb said, smugly. “This isn’t that two-bit, buzz-cut factory next door,” she exclaimed, facing the wall that divided the businesses and flipping off the barbershop with both hands. “This is Do or Dye!”
Camellia threw her head back and laughed at Deb’s dramatic gesture. “Deb, honestly,” she said, pretending to be stern with her.
Deb grabbed a broom and pushed Camellia’s cut hair out of the way. “Is there anything else I can do for you today?” she asked.
Camellia set two twenties on the counter to pay for the fourteen-dollar haircut. “Actually, there is.”
That evening, after Deb and Lisa had closed their businesses for the day, they met Camellia in the lot behind Lisa’s Designs where Lisa’s pickup was parked.
“Great hair!” Lisa exclaimed, promenading around Camellia to get a better look.
“I owe it all to Deb,” she said sincerely, nodding in Deb’s direction.
Deb rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can’t take all this hero worship.” She snatched the truck keys out of Lisa’s hand and dangled them in front of Camellia’s face. “Now, are we going to do this, or what?”
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