by Tegan Maher
I laughed because, aside from his home chores at both houses, he spent most of his time playing video games or playing outside, even when he was just hanging out at the restaurant. The only time he "worked" was when we were doing something he was interested in learning to do. To be fair though, that was a lot. He had a mind like a sponge and would pester you to death with his questions.
"Yeah," I told him. "I just don't know how we managed before you came into our lives."
"Have you been through the place yet?" Earl asked.
"Yeah. Coralee gave me a quick tour—oh crap! I'll be right back. I gotta scoot up to her place and grab the keys before she closes. She had them so she could keep the place lookin' decent."
"Scoot," Bobbie Sue said, motioning me toward the door.
I decided to walk since it was just a few blocks. It would be as fast as taking the truck and I’d still be back a matter of fifteen minutes or so.
When I her asked for the keys, I had to dodge a dozen questions from Coralee and Belle. Coralee scowled and shook her head when I wouldn’t provide details, her giant 80s hair moving with her like a helmet. It was still a wonder to me how she maintained that height and feathering, even with all the Aqua Net she used.
“Come up to Bobbie Sue’s. I’m gonna explain it to everybody at the same time.”
"I can't leave just yet. I got two appointments back to back. Belle can come and then bring me back whatever the big news is if you don't want to share with me yourself." She looked hurt, and I suspected she was a bit miffed because she wasn't gonna be the first to get the dirt.
"Look, I'd tell you if you could come up, but I want to tell everybody all at once. Rae doesn’t even know yet."
She heaved a put-upon sigh. "Fine, but Belle will come, I'm sure."
Coralee's mentor nodded. "Wouldn't miss it for the world. Matter of fact, I'll just come now. Give you some company on the walk."
We were almost back to the restaurant when I heard tires screeching and a man's voice calling my name behind me.
"Watch out," Belle hollered, shoving her hands through me as she instinctively tried to push me out of the way. I looked over my shoulder and barely managed to dive to the side before a big pink caddy barreled up onto the curb and over the fire hydrant I’d just walked past.
Had I waited a split second longer, or if that hydrant hadn't been there to stop her, I'd have been a dead woman. As it was, the caddy was hung on it, water spewing out either side.
"Honey, you okay?" Belle was hovering over me, frantic.
"Yeah," I said after I made sure all my fingers and toes moved. "I think so." As soon as I climbed to my feet, she popped out of sight.
Angus swept in. "Gosh, Noelle. I thought for sure you'd be joinin' us at any second. I tried to warn ya, but she came out of the blue, hell bent for leather straight at ya."
There was no questioning who was driving. There was only one pink caddie in Keyhole Lake—wouldn't nobody else be caught dead in one.
I took a few cautious steps toward the driver's door, avoiding the spraying water. The airbag had deployed and Olivia was hunched over the deflated balloon, her head on the steering wheel. I strode toward her, trying to make sense of the whole thing. My brain was still rattled and I was cold—no doubt in shock.
Reaching through the window, I prodded her arm. "Olivia?" No response.
I didn't want to shake her because if the nimrod had hurt herself, I didn't want to do more damage. The way she was, she'd own my farm if she got so much as a migraine, all because I was trying to make sure she wasn't dead.
She groaned and started to move, then picked her head up and looked at me, her eyes glazed.
I gave her a minute to focus, then asked again, "Are you okay?"
Her head wobbled and she blinked a few times, trying to get her bearings. Then her lip curled as she realized where she was. "What did you do to me?"
"Me?" I asked, my voice an octave higher than usual. "I didn't do anything. You tried to plow me over with this monstrosity you call a car."
She crinkled her brow. "I did no such thing. I don't even remember pulling out of the courthouse."
Before I could question her further, the rest of the crew rushed from inside and Hunter's truck was barreling up the street toward us. It was barely stopped when he leapt out, running toward me.
"Are you okay?" He grasped me by the upper arms and gave me a once-over.
"Yeah, I'm all right." I motioned toward the caddie, where Olivia was trying to push open her door. "I don't know about her, though."
He went over and pulled it open. Once she climbed out and took a few steps, he fired all the what and why questions at her. She just looked up at him and blinked.
"As I was just telling the hick you're dating, I don't even remember leaving the courthouse lot. What happened?" She was coming around; her eyes were clear and she took a few solid steps to the curb. When she saw the front of her car, she turned to me, enraged. "What did you do to my car? Do you have any idea how much makeup I had to sell to get that?"
I held out my hands to defend myself again, then took a deep breath and snapped my mouth shut. Something was squirrelly.
Hunter turned to me and asked me to go over what had happened. It took me two seconds to relay the information because it was pretty cut and dried.
He narrowed his eyes at me. "Did anything happen in her office today?"
I looked at the sidewalk and squirmed a little bit.
"Say you didn't hit her."
I snapped my eyes up to meet his. "Of course I didn't hit her! We were in the courthouse for cripes' sake. I'm a lot of things—stupid's not one of them."
"She's not lying," Olivia said, surprising me. "She was her typical white-trash self, but she didn't hit me."
I raised a brow and decided to let the comment pass.
"So you just tried to kill her for no reason?"
"What?" she said, her eyebrows shooting into her hair. "I didn't try to kill her!" She threw her hands in the air and pulled out her phone. "Y'all have obviously lost your everlovin' minds. I'm calling a tow truck."
Hunter stepped forward. "That's a good idea, but you're also under arrest."
She twisted around, nearly falling off the curb. "For what?"
I stepped forward. "Hunter, I don't know what's going on here, but—"
"But nothing, Noelle. You hate each other. You said mean things to her today and she no doubt said mean things back. You were the only one on the sidewalk and what? She just accidentally ran up on that exact spot while she was texting or something? I don't think so. Based on my personal observations, she's a scheming, malicious person who is entirely capable of killing you."
"Hunter, no. I can't stand her, and trust me—the prospect of making fun of her because she’d look hideous in orange is appealing, but she wouldn’t try to kill me."
He was looking back and forth between us, trying to make up his mind.
"Seriously," Olivia said. "She's onto something, as bad as I hate to say it. There's no way killin' her is worth bein' forced to wear orange for the rest of my life."
Bobbie Sue'd been watching me carefully, and she stepped forward. "I don't have a dawg in this fight," she said, examining Olivia, "but I'd say it's up to Noelle to determine whether she thinks any harm was done."
Hunter was wavering, and finally took a deep breath and released it. "Noelle, you're not willing to file charges?"
I shook my head.
He searched the crowd. "And nobody else saw what happened?"
Belle and Angus were conspicuously absent, even though they couldn't technically testify. Rae's brows were drawn together and Shelby looked like she wanted to beat Olivia herself. But nobody said a peep.
Hunter threw up his hands. "Olivia, I guess you're free to go. Everybody else, back inside."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I went to the bathroom and cleaned myself up, and Rae followed me. She took the tweezers from the first-aid kit to pick the grave
l out of my hands and I yanked my hand back, putting it under running water instead. She was lethal with tweezers.
"Are you sure you did the right thing by letting her go?" she asked as she poured peroxide over my palm. "I mean, the chick's been unhinged since grade school and you did go torment her in her own den today. Maybe she finally lost it."
I thought about what she said for a minute. "I don't see it. She's had almost thirty years to kill me if she wanted and our exchange today was a slumber party compared to how things usually go."
She shrugged as she dabbed antibacterial ointment on the road rash. "If you say so."
"I do. You don't seriously think I'd miss a legit chance to put her in jail do you?"
She snorted as we left the bathroom. "I don't reckon you would."
Things were pretty much back to normal by the time we rejoined everybody, or at least everybody was putting on a darn good show to get the ball rolling. It felt a little forced at first, but everybody seemed intent on making sure the Olivia incident didn’t detract from my good news.
Bobbie Sue surprised me by busting out some bubbly she kept in the back for special occasions; you'd be surprised how many proposals and bridal dinners happened there. Rae arched a brow when she noticed it was the good stuff.
After everybody was seated, I stood from my position at the head of the table and cleared my throat. "So, I guess y'all are wonderin' why I called you here."
"Yeah," Anna Mae said, "If you won the lottery, we're doin' another cruise and you're payin' this time!"
After somebody had taken it upon themselves to put Hank out of our misery and he'd been properly planted, Anna Mae'd taken us all on a girls-only cruise and it had been a blast.
I smiled and shook my head. "Nothin' nearly that grand, but I wouldn't mind goin' on another one. Except now"—I reached into the envelope to pull out the deed and held it, together with the keys, up for all to see—"I'll have to schedule it around my new business!"
Belle, Addy, and Cheri Lynn swooped in to get a closer look, and for those with corporeal forms and normal vision that couldn’t read the text from their positions, I said, "I managed to pick up the place beside Coralee's for the taxes! The courthouse had a lien on it, the owner has disappeared off the face of the planet, and now it's all mine!"
Cheers and whistles erupted, nearly rupturing my eardrums and causing other diners to stare at us, wondering what the big deal was. Raeann, with her usual flair, stood up and made the public announcement. "Noelle here just bought the place next to the Clip N Curl and will be openin' up her new place, Reimagined, and sellin' restored and re-purposed furniture and decorations. She's gonna need your help findin' good pieces to breathe new life into, so if you got a barn fulla stuff you think might do her any good, let her know!"
Congratulations circled the whole place; most of them knew me, if for no other reason than I'd worked there for the last four years.
After everything died down, Rae and Anna Mae came around and hugged me. Anna Mae's eyes sparked. "Now maybe we can go lookin' for stuff together! I love goin' to the sales, but sometimes it's lonely goin' alone." She glanced at Rae. "The three of us are gonna have so much fun!"
"Count us in," I told her. "Between all of us, we'll hear of more sales and come into contact with more people." I clinked my glass on theirs. "Here's to finding really cool junk!"
"Hear, hear," they said in tandem.
It looked like I'd already made my first business contact, even if she was already one of my closest friends. Reimagined was now a thing rather than an idea.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Louise was our server, and somewhere toward the end of the evening, Max—the ghost, not the donkey—popped in to check on her and to deliver a message from her mom. When he saw us there, he floated over to say hello.
"Hey, Max," I said. "How was the trip?"
"Bout what you'd expect from a trip around the country," he said in his typical gruff tone. I'd gotten to know him right after he was murdered. He literally showed up a few minutes afterward to report his own death. At first, I'd just thought he was a cantankerous old coot, which was true, but he was also one of those old-school guys who just doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve. It was there, though; you just had to look a little deeper.
"So it was good then. Louise said you and Emily had a great time. Did you get to see everything you wanted?"
He smiled, a rare thing for him in my experience. "Yeah, I reckon we did at that. We spent a couple extra days in Yellowstone. It's bigger than we figured." He glanced around and noticed the champagne flutes sitting around. "So what's the big occasion?"
A huge smile spread across his face and he turned to Hunter, jerking his chin in my direction. "You finally work up the nerve to put a ring on her? I remember when I proposed to Em ... carried that thing around for two weeks 'fore I finally just popped the question while we was sittin' at the drive-in."
Hunter's face had gone beet-red and I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. "Uh, no," Raeann said. "She got the deal of a lifetime on the building next to the Clip N Curl. We're celebratin' her first official night as a business owner."
He cleared his throat. "Well I shore did read that one wrong, I reckon. Sorry about that, son."
By that time, Hunter'd seen the humor in it and waved him off. "No problem, man. I can see where you'd think that."
Honestly, between the bubbly and the presence of my entire family, and the remnants of the whole giant Costco cheesecake Bobbie Sue'd brought out, I could see why he'd come to that conclusion.
"So," he said to Matt in an obvious attempt to move on. "I assume you went through it and did her inspection? Was everythin' all right? Some of them buildings over there are gettin' old and still have copper pipes and asbestos."
I sucked in a breath. I hadn't even thought of that, and panic crashed over me. What if it did? That would cost way more than what I had in my account.
Matt must have seen me starting to hyperventilate. "I haven't yet, but I'm sure that if we run into something like that, we'll work something out, seein' as how she helped you out and all."
"Course we would," Max said as if it was a given. "Ain't no way she could afford to pay someone to do that, and we're licensed for it. Sides, I wouldn't have any other crew workin' on her place. Never know what kinda shoddy work she'd get."
"Really? You'll help me if it comes to that?" I breathed a sigh of relief.
"Good grief, Noelle," Louise said. "I can't believe you'd even worry about that. We're all family."
I smiled and pulled my napkin from my lap and tossed it on my plate. "Then let's go take a look at the place. I didn't get to see much of it when I went through with Coralee other than just a quick peek in each room, and the light went out in the basement before I even made it down the stairs."
Everybody stacked their plates and Rae, Shelby, and Anna Mae helped me clear the table. Within just a few minutes, we had it set to rights; I figured it was the least we could do since Bobbie Sue'd refused to take a penny for the meal.
I loaded them into the dishwasher—a task so easy I didn’t bother using magic—and then invited Earl and Bobbie Sue to go with us. Earl told us to go on since it wasn't quite closing time yet, but Bobbie Sue and Justin grabbed their jackets and followed me out of the kitchen.
I noticed she was quiet, and the air around her seemed heavy. Justin rushed ahead of us to where the guys were waiting. She looked after him and a shadow of worry crossed her face. "Everything okay?" I asked.
She took a deep breath and puffed it out through her cheeks. "Yeah. It's just ... the final home visit is tomorrow," she said. "What if they find us lackin' again? Or think we're too old?"
She was talking about the visit from the county to determine their fitness to adopt Justin. Years before, they'd been turned down because they'd both been workaholics and they hadn't built the restaurant enough that they could afford to hire enough staff so somebody could be at home with him. Opinions on the “proper” w
ay to raise a kid had been different back then.
I put my arm around her and for the first time ever, she felt frail. That made me mad more than anything else, because there wasn't a stronger woman in the state than the one walking beside me, or one with a bigger heart, either. I stopped her and turned so I could look in her eyes.
"You listen to me and listen good. You're barely fifty and have more energy than somebody half your age. Lord knows I can't keep up with you. Your house is always spotless, you make more than enough money to take care of him, and, most important, you love him and he loves you. It's gonna be fine."
She smiled as she shrugged into her jacket. "You're a good kid, you know that?"
I lifted a shoulder. "Just statin' the facts. I'll be there for you, and by this time tomorrow, it'll be official. You know most of this has just been a matter of checkin' off the boxes anyway; Janelle thinks you're the best thing since sliced bread."
Janelle Perkins, Justin's overworked caseworker, had been so glad when not one but two suitable families had stepped up to care for him that I think she'd probably wept to have one less homeless or abused kid to worry about. When Justin had fallen into my path—literally—he'd been both. And now he wasn't, and it was going to stay that way.
Dark had fallen and the temperature had dropped. The warm snap was definitely over. That was about typical of Georgia that time of year. We were definitely warmer than northern states, but we did get cold. Most of the time it didn't get to bitter temps, but that night was one of the cooler ones we'd had.
We pulled our coats around us and I wished we'd decided to drive rather than walk off our suppers, but it was only a few blocks and lord knew with the slab of cheesecake I ate on top of the ribs and garlic bread, I needed the exercise.
I had to jiggle the key a little in the lock to get it to open and wondered idly where the money had come from to keep the lights on; something I'd have to follow up on because it might be another way to track down the previous owner. I knew maybe I was lookin' a gift horse in the mouth, but I'd liked Mr. Braxton.