Or rather scribble out the lie.
“Leaving for my spa day. Be back tonight. Love you, E.”
After the car wreck that’d killed her, the cops had checked. There’d been no spa appointment. No appointment of any kind they could find for either Ella or Millie’s husband. There’d also been no luggage in the vehicle so the pair probably hadn’t been running away for good. Just maybe slipping off together. To do things that Joe didn’t want to think about.
The ink was fading on the receipt, but he could still read the purchases that Ella had made the day she’d died. A gallon of two percent milk, Wheat Thins crackers, an Almond Joy candy bar.
And a One-Step Pregnancy Test.
Joe closed his eyes to shut out the words on both the front and the back of the receipt, and he let the grief—fresh and raw—wash over him.
CHAPTER THREE
THE NEXT DAY, Millie read the first thing on her research to-do list, and she sighed. Take a current picture of the tombstone of the person you’re researching.
That’s when the reality of what she was doing gave her another hard smack upside the head.
To get that picture, she’d have to go to Ella McCann’s grave. She’d no doubt have to see the date of the woman’s death that would be carved into marble or some other kind of stone. And that date was going to bring on the mother lode of memories for her since it was Royce’s death date, too.
Of course, Millie didn’t actually need to see anything like headstones or death dates to take jabs at those memories. Too much of that fateful day was still plenty fresh in her mind.
Too much of what she didn’t know was fresh, as well.
She hadn’t read the medical examiner’s report, but she’d heard things about it. One of those things was that the crash had critically injured both Ella and Royce, but neither had died right away. In fact Ella had had the time to unhook her seat belt and had used her last breath and final bit of energy to move over onto Royce, putting her head on his shoulder. Royce had used his last breath and energy to wrap his arms around Ella.
Since Millie had heard the “wrap his arms” and “on his shoulder” parts from one of the cops who’d been a first responder on the scene, she figured it was true. The only thing that could have added more sting to that image was for Ella to have had some recent hickeys. Or for Royce to have had a pocketful of condoms. But there’d been none of that, only the comforting gestures that were far more intimate than hickeys or condoms.
In those last moments of their lives, they’d sought, and found, each other.
“Hey, Millie,” she heard someone call out. It was Monte Klein, one of the sales associates at Once Upon a Time. With his hand over the mouthpiece of the old-fashioned cordless landline phone they used at the checkout desk, he stuck his head in the doorway of her office. “Mr. Lawrence wants to talk to you about buying some of his art.”
Millie frowned because the sculptures of Mr. Lawrence—aka Lawrence Parkman—weren’t art. More like art attempts. They were replicas of famous landmarks—the Alamo, the Statue of Liberty, etc.—but the pieces often just resembled blobs of clay.
Normally, Millie wouldn’t have welcomed such a distraction, but she was sinking fast into the pit of “arms, a shoulder and intimacy” so she didn’t give an automatic dismissal to Monte. She checked her watch, calculated that it would take her less than a half hour to get out to the cemetery, take the photo and get back. Then, she could tick off the first item on her checklist.
“Tell Mr. Lawrence he can meet me in my office in an hour,” Millie said, getting to her feet.
Monte’s right eyebrow, which was pierced with three dime-sized gold hoops, winged up, causing those hoops to jiggle. “Mr. Lawrence,” he repeated as if she’d recently been robbed of hearing and all common sense.
“One hour,” Millie verified. “I probably won’t buy anything, but I can at least show him some respect by meeting with him.”
Monte frowned and gave her a level-eyed look. “He was at the town hall when you dropped the f-stinker?”
“He was,” Millie admitted. As usual, Mr. Lawrence had been seated directly behind her mother which meant he’d been in very good hearing range. But this wasn’t a case of smoothing over feathers ruffled by bad words.
Well, maybe it wasn’t.
She’d followed the vanilla straight line for so long that she wasn’t sure she knew why she did the things she did.
Millie grabbed her purse and what was left of her to-go cup of coffee and headed out of her office. She was only halfway to the shop’s front door when it opened, and she saw someone else with ruffled feathers.
Her mother.
Correction: her pissed-off mother.
Coming straight toward Millie, Laurie Jean ignored Monte’s cheery greeting which was more sarcasm than cheeriness, and her mother maneuvered Millie away from Monte and into the nook that contained a collection of Edwardian boudoir pieces. Her mother didn’t even take the time to gather her breath, or turn up her nose at what she always considered “junk,” before she dived right into her tirade.
“I’ve been on the phone all morning, trying to smooth over the disaster you created for your family.” Laurie Jean snapped out the words while still managing to whisper. “But you’ve got to do some damage control of your own.”
“Damage control?” Millie questioned.
Laurie Jean’s nod was fast and crisp. “You need to write an apology to each and every member of the Last Ride Society. Explain that you’re still grieving for your husband and that you had a temporary breakdown when you drew that trashy woman’s name.”
Normally, hearing her mother say “that trashy woman” wouldn’t have gotten a rise from Millie. In fact, Millie had actually thought plenty worse about Ella. But this morning, the rise came, and it rose and rose until a response bubbled out of Millie’s mouth.
“Should I use the actual word I said in the apology?” Millie coolly asked. “You know, just to jog their memories.”
The look that her mother gave her could have taken the scalding heat out of an erupting volcano, and Millie groaned. Yes, she’d gotten some immediate satisfaction in tossing that at her mom, but it could ignite a thousand gallons of retaliation from Laurie Jean.
“I’m sorry,” Millie quickly added before her mother could unclench her jaw enough to let loose. “I’m still grieving, and all of this is getting to me.” And she just kept on talking while Laurie Jean’s heated eyes drilled into her. “I’ll write the apologies, and I’ll finish the Last Ride Society research ASAP. In fact, that’s where I was heading now, to take care of the first thing on the to-do list.”
Laurie Jean opened her mouth, no doubt to ramp up her blasting, so Millie knew she had to move faster than her mother’s words. She didn’t succeed though.
“I heard someone mention my parents.” Laurie Jean’s bottom lip trembled. “Both my mother and father used language like that, and some people think that sort of thing passes down through the bloodline. My parents,” she repeated with the tremble and hurt in her voice.
That was the big guns for her mom. Laurie Jean rarely brought up anything about her parents. They’d died when Laurie Jean had been a teenager so the only thing Millie knew about them was from gossip.
If the sources were anywhere near reliable, and that was questionable, Millie’s maternal grandparents had been dirt poor scum from West Texas. Possibly criminals, depending on who was doling out the gossip. They’d possibly been murdered, or killed each other, again depending on who was telling the tale.
Laurie Jean no doubt considered their passing a blessing since she’d then been sent to Last Ride to live with her mother’s cousin, Freida, who’d married into the Granger family. The Grangers had as much money and prestige as the Parkmans and Daytons and had raised Laurie Jean as one of their own. In turn, Laurie Jean had spent most of her adult life trying
to shake off the bone-deep scars from her “unacceptable” roots, especially after marrying Millie’s father, a Parkman. Hearing her parents’ names being bandied about would no doubt take a poke at Laurie Jean’s scars again.
“I’m sorry,” Millie told her, and she meant it.
She couldn’t understand why those roots would bring her such misery, but then Millie hadn’t done the metaphorical walk in her mother’s shoes. That’s why she would write those apologies and do whatever was necessary to shift the gossip away from her mother and back onto her.
“I’ll take care of it,” Millie assured her, and she dropped a kiss on her mother’s cheek. “Sorry, but I have to go now so I can get back in time for an appointment.”
“She does have an appointment,” Monte called out to confirm.
Of course, he’d been listening and would gripe to Millie later about how she should have stood up to her mother. In turn, Millie would gripe to him about eavesdropping. Neither gripe would amount to anything.
Millie hurried to her car in the back parking lot of the shop and she sped off. She used the drive to curse her mother’s crappy childhood, the name she’d drawn from the Bowl o’ Tombstones. She even cursed her ancestor Hezzie for setting all of this in motion.
Millie totally got Hezzie’s reasons for wanting to preserve the history of the area since Hezzie had been the creator of that early history. Hezzie had been a young widow, just twenty years old, when she’d founded Last Ride, and she’d used the money her late husband had left her to do that.
There were enough history books and recollection of Hezzie for Millie to know that the woman had started the town by building a church, a grocer and a guesthouse on what would become Main Street. Hezzie had personally run all three for several years before marrying her second husband, a rich rancher, who’d added, added and added to what would become his wife’s legacy. After he’d passed, Hezzie’s third and last husband had added even more.
Life had basically doled out lemons to Hezzie by making her a young widow, and the woman had made a whole lot of lemonade. It made Millie feel like a failure. She owned a business that she’d inherited and hadn’t moved out of the grief rut after losing Royce.
Sighing, wallowing some in self-pity and wishing she’d brought some Jolly Ranchers with her, she drove by Parkman’s Passed, the large cemetery that some called Hoity-Toity Hill. She kept driving, thankful that she wouldn’t have to go past Still Waters, the Dayton family cemetery where Royce was buried.
Where his parents were, too.
They’d been in their forties when Royce had been born and had moved to Last Ride when he’d been a baby so his father could be closer to his own aging parents. Royce had lost those grandparents when he’d been in elementary school. Then, both his parents had passed away a few years before their only son’s car accident. His father, from colon cancer. His mother, an aneurysm. Not exactly peaceful ways to die, but at least they hadn’t had to deal with losing their son. Especially losing him the way he’d died.
Still Waters was on the other side of town, and she avoided it when she could. Before today, Millie had done the same to Hilltop, a nonfamily, nondenominational cemetery where Ella was buried. But today, she made the turn onto the rock and gravel road that coiled up the sprawling hill that had obviously given the place its name.
It didn’t take her long to spot the headstones. Dozens of them on the front side of the hill, with probably dozens more on the back, and it occurred to her that she didn’t have a clue where to look for Ella’s grave. Since it would likely be one of the more recent ones, she might be able to spot the newness of it. Taking a hit of coffee, she got out and started the hunt.
When she’d dressed for work that day in one of her usual skirts and tops, she hadn’t taken into account that she’d be walking on gravel and grass, so Millie did plenty of wobbling in her heeled sandals. Moving as fast as she could, she scanned the names on the tombstones. No Ella. And none of the white tombstones showed either age or lack thereof.
Her ankles were hurting, she was huffing a little and she’d worked up an uncomfortable sticky sweat by the time she reached the top of the hill. And her heart skittered a couple of too-fast beats when she practically came face-to-face with the girl. A teenager with thick brown hair. She was wearing shorts, a red top and flip-flops, and she was standing next to Ella’s grave.
“Hey,” the girl said.
Even though Millie had never met her, she instantly knew who this was. Dara, Joe and Ella’s daughter. She’d been eleven when her mother had died so that meant she was thirteen now, and she’d definitely gotten her looks from her father.
“Hey,” Millie managed.
Dara didn’t smile, but there was something welcoming and pleasant enough about her expression that didn’t send Millie running. However, Millie did start to ease away so she could give the girl privacy for this visit with her mom.
“Dad’s over there.” Dara tipped her head toward the bottom of the hill.
Millie shifted in that direction. With his arms folded over his chest, boots crossed at the ankles, a gray Stetson tipped low over his face, Joe was leaning against his truck that was parked beneath a sprawling live oak. Because of the Stetson and the shade from the tree, Millie couldn’t see his face, but she was betting there was nothing pleasant or welcoming about it. When she’d gone to tell him about the drawing, he’d made it clear enough that he didn’t want her digging into Ella’s life.
“Dad doesn’t like coming here so he hangs back,” Dara went on. “But he drives me here at least once a week so I can bring Mom flowers. She loved daisies.”
That drew Millie’s attention back to the grave. And yes, there was a bouquet of daisies lying just beneath the headstone.
“They’re pretty,” Millie remarked. Her voice was clogged as if she was catching a cold, and she fluttered her fingers in the direction of her car. “I’m sorry I interrupted you. I’ll just be going.”
However, Millie barely made it a step before Dara’s question stopped her in her tracks.
“Do you hate my mom?” the girl asked, and she didn’t give Millie a chance to respond. “I hear what people say when they’re whispering about her and your husband.”
Those blasted whispers. Millie certainly hadn’t thought she was the only recipient of them, but it would have put some good karma in the world if this young girl had been excluded from such things.
“No. I don’t hate her,” Millie said.
That wasn’t anywhere close to the truth. Of course, there was hate. This was the woman who’d probably been Royce’s lover. Maybe even a longtime one.
Dara stared at her as if trying to decide if she believed her or not. “Good,” the girl finally concluded. “Because my mom was nice. Pretty, too.”
Millie wondered which of those traits had attracted Royce. Maybe both. Or maybe he’d been attracted to her simply because she hadn’t been anything like his wife.
“People talk about her because she got pregnant with me before she married my dad,” Dara continued. “But Mom said let ’em talk, that she got the best deal ever by having me and she wouldn’t have changed that for the world.”
This seemed like TMI and personal, but Millie couldn’t figure out a way to stop this flood of information that she didn’t want. The girl was grieving for her mother. Missing her. And Dara hadn’t been responsible for anything that’d happened between Ella and Royce.
“I understand,” Millie muttered because she honestly didn’t have a clue what else to say.
Dara shrugged. “Mom wanted more kids, but it didn’t happen. She said that made her sad for a long time but then she accepted that I’d be her one and only beautiful butterfly. She loved butterflies, too,” the girl added.
Millie knew all about that. Wanting a baby and not having it happen. She’d never used birth control when Royce and she had been married, and she
hadn’t gotten pregnant in the entire five years.
No beautiful butterflies for her.
When she’d pressed Royce about them seeing a fertility specialist, he’d nixed the idea. At the time, Millie had thought it was because he hadn’t been ready to be a father, but now she wondered if it had more to do with Ella McCann. It probably wouldn’t do to knock up your wife while banging your mistress.
Millie shook her head, hoping that last thought would fly right out of it.
“I know you drew my mom’s name at the society deal in the town hall. I’ll help you with the research if you want,” Dara said, yanking Millie’s attention back to her.
Three responses came to mind. Huh? was Millie’s first reaction. Followed by a mentally stuttered What? and Why?
“I want to help you,” Dara amended, “so you won’t just write up what other people are saying about her. I knew her better than all those nosy gossips.”
Possibly. But Millie doubted Ella had shared any details about a lover with her young daughter.
“It’s a generous offer,” Millie finally answered, and she tried to choose her words carefully. “But I don’t want to bring up any painful memories for you.”
“It won’t,” Dara quickly assured her. She tapped her head. “It’s all there, anyway. Just want to make sure you get things right about her. But there’s a catch,” the girl added. “I’d want you to help me with something.”
Millie said that stuttered “H-huh?” aloud this time.
“I’d want you to help do some...things,” Dara said.
Oh, Millie didn’t like the girl’s hesitation before that last word. “Define ‘things.’”
Dara looked her straight in the eyes. “My bucket list.”
Of all the responses Millie had considered Dara might say, that wasn’t one of them. Not even close. “Uh, do thirteen-year-old girls have a bucket list?” she asked.
“I do,” Dara assured her.
Okay. Maybe everyone had a list of stuff they wanted to experience. She personally didn’t, but then it’d been a while since she’d thought of something she might like to do in the future. Most days, she was still just doing the minute-to-minute deal.
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