by Stacy Gail
“The point is, I always thought the two of you were just too different to work. She’s from a rainbow-filled kingdom with marble mansions and fussy servants, and you’re a real-world product of Garden Court. In terms of Things That Don’t Mix, you and Miranda surpass oil and water.”
“I bet I know who the two of you are talking about.” Pauline Padgett, the owner of the sweet shop, appeared in the doorway, carrying a large package of what appeared to be flat bakery boxes. “The town’s in an uproar about the prodigal daughter’s return.”
Coe hastened to relieve Pauline of her heavy burden and set it where she indicated on a nearby counter. “I’m not surprised. That’s how it is with the Brookhavens. Just like the Thornes, it’s newsworthy if any of them blows their nose.”
“Whatever Miranda Brookhaven is up to,” Pauline said as she unbuttoned her coat, “it’s one heck of a lot more than blowing her nose.”
Coe stilled with an alertness he was helpless to stop. “Why? What is she—no wait, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
“Oh my God, I do.” Rounding the workstation, Lucy handed the chocolate-filled squeeze bottle to Coe with a bright smile. “A gift just for you, to sweeten your mood. Enjoy some super-exclusive, ultra-spectacular mocha ganache-style syrupy stuff.”
“You’re giving me your failure?”
“Shut up, it’ll taste great on ice cream. Pauline,” Lucy called as the older woman disappeared into the cozy back mudroom that was used as a locker room. “The suspense is killing us. What’s Miranda up to?”
“For the record, I would like to take this opportunity to announce that I seriously don’t give a shit.” Coe stared down at the bottle of chocolate, scowling. But his feet refused to uproot themselves from where he stood.
“Hold onto your hats.” Tying an apron around her ample waist, Pauline reappeared in the kitchen. “I ran into Libby Kippley at the post office. She was telling everyone who’d listen how her husband Kip had turned himself into a nervous wreck over their newest tenant moving in today at Garden Court—Miss Miranda Brookhaven herself.”
* * *
Three sneezes exploded from Miranda as she finally closed the closet on a row of neatly hung clothes, her head pounding merrily away with each eruption. With a groan, she rested her forehead against the chilly laminated surface of the door, eyes closing in misery. She’d always been an allergy sufferer, from dust to mold to cat dander, and it didn’t take a forensics analysis to tell her that all that and more were present in her new surroundings. But it was only temporary. With luck she wouldn’t be in Bitterthorn long, and as the only other affordable lodging option was the town’s no-tell motel known as the Nooner, she’d endure the ancient trailer for the duration. Not that the Nooner was a bad place, all things considered. Like countless people before her, she’d lost her virginity there. Though lost wasn’t exactly an accurate term. She’d thrown it out the proverbial window almost from the moment Coe had turned his considerable masculine charm her way. Just two years older than she was, he’d seemed infinitely worldly and dangerous, an up-and-coming stock-car driver looking for rides at her father’s track and tinkering with any engine he could get his hands on. She’d been so thrilled he’d chosen to set his sights on her, an eighteen-year-old high-school girl striving to earn her full-ride scholarship to UT Dallas, that she had never once questioned his interest. At the time, the only thing in her universe had been the starry-eyed belief that she was loved and in love, and theirs was a soul-deep bond that would burn for a thousand lifetimes.
Ugh. What she wouldn’t give to have a time machine so she could go back and smack the stupid out of her eighteen-year-old self.
A faint thump on the side of the bedroom wall had her snapping around just in time to see a face vanish from the edge of the dirty window. Like a shot she was out onto the rickety wooden landing outside the front door, just in time to see a thin leg vanish into the mobile home facing hers. Her short sigh kicked off a coughing fit before she marched down the steps and over to her neighbor’s door. There was no time like the present to get this over with, and the fresh air would do her a world of good.
Her neighbor’s door—the same grainy, Dijon-mustard-yellow as the rest of the trailer—abruptly flung open just as she raised her hand to knock. A heavyset woman in a housedress and pale pink cardigan filled the doorframe, gray roots showing at the base of her raspberry-colored hair and a pair of half-glasses hanging from a chain around her neck. The scowl on the older woman’s hangdog face made a joke of the Welcome mat on which Miranda stood, and she took a step back before she could stop herself.
“Well?” The older woman’s voice would have made a bullfrog swoon with envy. “You just going to stare at me all day? I’ve got things to do, even if you don’t.”
“Esme Fenster, right?” Digging the name out of her memory banks out of desperation more than anything, she gamely offered her hand and produced her best social smile. “I hope you don’t mind my hopping over here to introduce myself. My name is Miranda, and I’m your new neighbor. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Uh-huh.” Esme Fenster’s tired, unimpressed eyes flicked to the extended hand before she turned from it on the pretense of shooing a dark-haired girl about the age of four away from the door. “I already know who you are. You’re B.B. Brookhaven’s youngest. I heard about you moving in this morning, but I didn’t believe it. What brings you to the have-not side of Bitterthorn? Slumming?”
The hostility was as subtle as a smack, and her smile vanished. “I needed a place to live, just like you and everyone else.”
“But you’re not just like everyone else, are you? This is quite the comedown for a Brookhaven. Oh my, how the mighty have fallen.”
Miranda lifted her chin even as a prickling, uncomfortable heat crawled up her neck. But she’d be damned if she’d drop her eyes. “I came over to introduce myself, and to ask for the little ones in your care to please refrain from peeking into the windows next door now that I’ve moved in. If they’d like to get to know me, all they have to do is knock on the door and introduce themselves. I’d be happy to meet them.”
The woman’s mouth thinned, but the defensive outrage Miranda had expected to be blasted with never happened. Instead Esme turned back to the dim interior of the trailer. “Charlie, get out here this instant! Now I get why he came tearing through here like he was being chased by wild dogs,” she added, her scowl worsening. “These kids are always up to something. I turn my back for a half a second and they’re out the door or climbing on the ceiling...Charlie, right now!”
A mop of dark hair poked out, followed by huge dark eyes and a cherubic round face. The boy shuffled his battered sneakered feet on his way to the door with such profound reluctance it was all Miranda could do to keep from grinning. If ever a kid had the Walk of Shame down pat, Charlie did.
Esme jammed her hands on her hips. “Were you peeking in the windows of the trailer next door? Answer me now.”
Charlie’s head drooped like he’d just gotten sentenced to be executed by way of the kraken. “I just wanted to see what a princess looked like.”
Miranda’s desire to smile vanished.
The little girl, with the same dark eyes and hair as her brother, hopped behind her grandmother. “Are you really a princess lady?”
She couldn’t snarl at a child, could she? “No.”
“But you gots the hair of a princess lady.”
“Sadie, that’s enough. You and Charlie go to your room and wait for me to call you for lunch. They won’t bother you again,” Esme added and with that, shut the door in Miranda’s face.
Chapter Three
When Miranda awoke the next morning to another bout of sneezing and her eyes almost glued shut, the prospect of moving to the Nooner didn’t seem so bad. A quick shower with surprisingly hot water helped unclog her sinuses, but the
darkness gathered in the corners of the otherwise-clean shower stall was part of the problem. She used the last of the bleach she had to clean the moldy grout, and her dwindling supplies shifted her to her next set of priorities. Food.
Gingerly she settled into the Naugahyde nightmare that was the aged kitchen nook to make a list of necessities. But just as she opened up her phone to start typing, the text window popped up at the top of the screen.
Hey, kiddo. Checked on your apt. earlier. All is well. Hope you’re doing the same.
A corner of Miranda’s mouth curled. Geraldine. Maybe it was a measure of how much she liked a person when she put their name into her phone’s memory, she thought, opening the text box to type. There had to be some truth to that, because there was no doubt—her neighbor from across the hall was the absolute bomb. Mid-forties and a total knockout, Geraldine Beasley was a full-time tantric yoga instructor, kept a pair of leash-trained micro pigs as pets and had a twenty-nine-year-old boyfriend, Tony, who believed she’d hung both the sun and the moon in the sky.
When the whole mess of Miranda’s father’s death, the will and getting the valve back to Coe broke open, Miranda had turned to her neighbor to unload. She’d been a basket case—horrified that her father hadn’t given back the valve outright, furious she had to jump through hoops in order to get the stupid thing back to its rightful owner, freaked the hell out over the prospect of seeing Coe again...and though she never admitted it to Geraldine, grieving over the loss of a father who’d thrown her away. Geraldine had let her rant, wordlessly pouring wine into her until she calmed down, and that was when the older woman had told her something that had been in the back of her mind ever since.
“Sometimes we humans get hurt so bad, all we can do is walk away. But no matter how far we think we’ve walked from the thing that hurt us, eventually we realize the hurt is still there. It’s there because we took it with us. It’s there because we never let it heal. Maybe this is your chance to finally let your wounds heal, kiddo.”
She was far from healed, she could admit that now. But looking Coe in the eye without falling apart made her realize she was stronger than she thought she was. That was something, at least.
Don’t know if I’m well or not, but I’m here. Thx for checking on my place. XO.
It took a few moments for Geraldine’s next message to appear. Was thinking about you and your old flame while teaching Tony kegel exercises to help w/ stamina.
Miranda let out a squeak. TMI, Geraldine. TMI.
He’s already withheld one ejac while experiencing full O, then went on for half hr. and reached another O. Which made me think your old flame might have control issues.
She stared at the words in flat-out shock. Seriously, Geraldine was just about the coolest crayon in the box, but there were times when she was too far out there for Miranda to keep up with. Uh, no. All was functioning quite well back then. Extremely well, truth be told. But unlike her neighbor, discretion kept her from posting about it.
Again there was a bit of a wait for the other woman’s message to appear. Not talking about his penis. I mean he might feel a need to keep tight control on emotions. Getting you out of his life when he did might have been his way of controlling emotions that were getting out of hand. Make sense?
Not where Coe was concerned. The only genuine emotion he may have had for her in the past was lust. Now it was hatred. When it came to Coe Rodas, there wasn’t a terribly wide range of emotion to analyze. Nice thought, but not reality. Besides, all that matters now is fulfilling the will’s obligations, nothing more. Not making lots of progress, but it’s early yet. I’ll keep you posted.
Please do. Tony says hi, btw.
Miranda offered both the appropriate greetings and farewells before closing the text function, trying not to think of Tony diligently practicing his kegel exercises while Geraldine texted. Her neighbor was a sweetheart for giving her current predicament any thought at all, and while Miranda was grateful, she couldn’t help but think Geraldine’s focus was off. Like way-out-in-outer-space off. The only reason she’d come back to Bitterthorn was to return to Coe the one thing of value that he had lost. His emotions, then and now, were irrelevant.
With a shake of her head, Miranda tried to get her brain back to the task of figuring out her grocery list when the screen suddenly flashed again. This time the whole screen changed, showing the engagement picture of her sister, her blond hair, white smile and surgically plumped lips perfect as she flashed the oversized diamond at the camera. For a full second she stared dispassionately at the ring Katherine had received from Anthony Carstairs, the son of her father’s attorney and the shallowest man she had ever met.
All things considered, Katherine and Anthony were made for each other.
Gritting her teeth, Miranda tapped the screen with her thumb and wished the silence that had stretched between them for seven years had lasted beyond their father’s death. “It’s midmorning, Katherine. A bit early for you to be up and about, isn’t it?”
“I wish I could sleep.” Katherine’s lackluster tone made Miranda want to crawl away and hide. Rail thin, plucked, plumped, waxed and tanned to within an inch of her life, her older sister was the picture of the healthy elite. Yet, for some reason, she always had some sort of epic suffering going on. As far as Katherine was concerned, her life was The Never-Ending Story of Woe. “I haven’t been able to get more than a couple hours of sleep ever since Dad died.”
“Goodness. You must look like a zombie by now.”
“I do, you have no idea,” came the quavering reply. When drama was required, Katherine could quaver like a pro. “You’d believe I’ve been through hell if you’d seen me at Dad’s funeral. But of course, you didn’t bother to show up.”
Miranda pressed a fist to her chest, where a slow, jagged twisting of a knife carved a hole where her heart used to be. It was a pain borne from the knowledge that a relationship had broken so badly it could never be salvaged. And now there was no hope of even making peace with it. Her father’s death had condemned her to a life sentence of never knowing closure.
Another thing she could never forgive.
“I had nothing to do with him when he was alive, Katherine.” When she dragged her voice from the depths of her knot-tight throat, she wasn’t surprised at the jaggedness of it. “It would have been the height of hypocrisy if I’d gone.”
“Oh believe me, I get it. Why forgive a man for his mistakes even after his death? It’s so much more convenient to hold onto your grudges and blame your shitty life on him rather than owning up to the choices you’ve—”
“Goodbye, Katherine.”
“Wait—”
Miranda had no remorse in hanging up and refocusing on her grocery list. Or trying to. But as much as she struggled to shut her sister’s accusation out as nothing more than the entitled rant of a woman who’d been pampered her entire life, something dark snaked through the hardened core of her heart. The grudges, as Katherine had put it, had kept Miranda going when times were lean and everything in her yearned to return to the luxurious nest her father had created for his two daughters. But it was a nest built on deceit and thievery, and she’d rather have starved in a hovel than go back. How her sister could call what their father had done a “mistake” was beyond her.
When Katherine called about a minute later, Miranda had no qualms about ignoring it. Instead, she went about drying her hair and pulling it back into a plain French braid to hide that the pale strands were frizzing in the humidity that was predominant in south Texas. She was just gathering her things when the text-message chime she’d set up for her sister—a baby wailing—caught her attention.
I apologize. I mean it. Please answer, I need to discuss business with you.
Her brow tensed as she stared at the screen. After seven years of pretending Miranda had somehow fallen off the face of the earth, the on
ly business Katherine could possibly have with her would be about their father’s will. Just the prospect of rehashing that mess was enough to blacken her already murky mood. But, like death and taxes, messy family entanglements couldn’t be avoided.
Hated, dreaded and thoroughly cursed, certainly. But not avoided.
When the phone rang again, she dug deep to find a thread of patience. “Good morning, Katherine. How are you today?”
There was only a heartbeat’s hesitation. “I’m fine, thanks for asking. And thank you so much for taking my call.”
Death by razor-edged manners. Their oh-so-civilized thief of a father would be proud. “Certainly. What can I do for you?”
“Anthony and I were curious if you’ve made contact with Roscoe Rodas regarding the contents of Dad’s will?”
Miranda had to bite her lips together to keep from correcting her sister on Coe’s name. She’d called him Roscoe the first chance she got, after all. “Indeed I have. I gave Coe a copy of the will the moment I got into town.” Never mind that it had made her into a nervous wreck, or that just seeing him again had crushed the air out of her lungs. No one needed to know that.
“I see. And you’ve complied with the terms of the will by taking up residence in Bitterthorn?”
“I’m the newest resident of Garden Court.” Chew on that, sis.
Apparently chewing something that large almost choked Katherine, if her cough was any indication. “W-what did you just say? What about the money left to you to pay for this endeavor?”
“How could I spend any of that money in good conscience, knowing that it probably came from some dirty dealing of his? Believe me, life would be a lot easier if I could, but I just can’t make myself do it.”
“What a horrible, vindictive thing to say about your own father.”