Tucked Away

by Jennie Marts

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Get up.”

  Charlie opened one scratchy, dry eye to see a red-haired siren standing over her bed. She closed her eye and groaned as she rolled over. “Go away.”

  “Get your scrawny butt out of bed.” The siren swatted her rear-end with a pillow. “You’ve been moping around long enough.”

  “Don’t you have some coffee to pour or some pancakes to serve?”

  “Now that’s just mean.” The owner of the diner whacked her again. “But I can rise above that nasty comment in the cause of friendship.”

  She pulled the covers of her grandmother’s quilt over her head. She and Cherry had become better friends over the summer, between lunches at the diner and sharing margaritas and corn chips on Taco Tuesdays over at La Casita. Charlie usually felt a real affection for the woman, but today she was getting in the way of her personal pity party.

  Cherry grabbed the corner of the blanket and pulled it to the floor. “What I can’t rise above is the stink in this room. You are living in a pig pen.”

  Without the protective blanket, she blinked her eyes open and looked down at the tank top and sweats she’d been wearing for the last few days. Eyeing the dark stain on the front of her shirt, she tried to remember what she had dropped down her front and guessed it was either coffee or lasagna.

  Sighing with resignation, she pushed herself up to a sitting position and surveyed her bedroom. Empty water bottles and soda cans lined the floor. And actual soda. She’d been too depressed to care if she was even drinking diet pop.

  A pile of clothes sat in the rocker by the window, and she pondered if they were clean clothes ready to be folded or a dirty load needing to be washed.

  Dirty dishes lined the dresser. Joy loped into the room and sniffed at a dried and crusted half-eaten sandwich that rested on a plate on the floor. It evidently didn’t rest in peace, though, because even the dog passed on eating the dead sandwich.

  Cherry nodded at the dog. “See, even your dog thinks you stink. You’ve been in here going on five days now. It’s time to rejoin the land of the living.”

  “What if I don’t want to?” She hated the whiny tone of her voice. Maybe, if she just went back to bed for another day or five, then she would feel better.

  “It doesn’t matter. You have to get up. You’re not the first person to have your heart broken, and you won’t be the last. But you can’t stay in here forever. So, get out of that bed and go get in the shower. I’ll put these sheets in the washer, and then I’m gonna find a garbage bag and start tunneling out this room.”

  “Fine.” Charlie slid off the bed, surprised at the stiffness in the muscles she’d failed to use the past several days. She bent to pet the dog’s head, caught a whiff of herself, and decided a shower might not be a bad idea.

  “How’d you know to come find me?” She secretly hoped Zack had sent the only person in town that had truly befriended her to come check on her.

  “I run the diner. Half the town is talking about how you and Zack broke up, and the other half are yapping about your daddy trying to sell this farm to the railroad. Plus, Cash called me. He’s worried about you. But, under the circumstances, he didn’t think he was probably the best person to come and rescue you.”

  “So, now you’re the crisis center as well as pie server?”

  “Pie-server, pancake-flipper, coffee-pourer. Those are all things I do. But I am also the hug-giving, great-listening, chocolate-feeding, softest shoulder around for crying on.”

  Charlie sighed. “I’ll take one of everything.”

  Cherry opened her arms, and Charlie stepped into them, letting herself be comforted by her friend.

  Cherry squeezed her and patted her back, then tipped up Charlie’s chin and gave her a wink. “Never underestimate the power of a good hug. Now, please, go bathe.”

  Half an hour later, she was showered and dressed in clean clothes. Cherry had made quick work of the messy bedroom, dumping trash and remaking the bed with fresh sheets from the linen closet. She’d opened the windows and let the fresh breeze chase away the stale scent of too much time lying in bed.

  Cherry had just finished vacuuming the floor when Charlie stepped from the bathroom, freshly washed and shampooed. Cherry gestured to the pink mug on the edge of the dresser. “Poured ya a fresh cup of coffee. Thought you could use it.”

  She sipped the dark liquid, now cooled slightly from sitting out. “I’m just not really sure what I should be doing now. I feel lost.”

  Cherry finished wrapping the vacuum’s cord, and she leaned one hip against the handle. “What do you think you should be doing?”

  She let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know. I guess I should be figuring out how to get back into Sophie’s good graces, how to win Zack back, how to stop my parents from selling this farm out from under me, and if there really was foul play involved in Gigi’s death.”

  Cherry gasped. “Shit on a fritter. What are you talking about? I mean, yes, you should do that first stuff, but why do you think something happened to Gigi?”

  “Really? Shit on a fritter? I’m not exactly sure what a fritter is, but I am pretty sure I don’t want to poop on one.”

  “Leave my redneck out of this. Who told you something happened to Gigi?”

  “Sophie originally said something, but I have this funny feeling that something bad happened to her.”

  “What in the hamhock are you talking about?”

  Charlie suddenly regretted bringing up the subject of her grandmother. She had dreamed of Gigi last night, though, and she couldn’t remember exactly what she’d said, but Gigi hadn’t looked happy, perched on top of the pile of clean/possibly dirty clothes stacked in her favorite rocker. She’d probably just conjured up the image of her grandmother to encourage herself to do some laundry. “Do you believe in spirits?”

  Cherry’s eyes went wide. “Of course I believe in the spirit world. Did Gigi actually appear to you? Is she with us now?”

  The redhead stuck her arms out as if she were playing the spirit version of Marco Polo. “Gigi, can you hear me? It’s Cherry. We want to help you. Give us a sign if you are here now.” Her voice held a breathy sing-song quality as if she were trying to talk “spirit”.

  Charlie half expected her to start moaning whoo-ooo.

  “Are you finished? This is not an episode of Ghost Hunters. And it’s not like that. I just get a feeling that she’s—you know—watching over me. Honestly, I don’t know if there is anything to it. I just feel like her presence is here, letting me know that she loves me and it makes me feel brave, like I can handle this new farm life. Does that sound stupid?”

  “No, of course not. I lost my grandparents not too long ago; they’re the ones who left me the diner. And sometimes I can practically hear my grandmother’s voice in my head telling me I’m adding too much starch to the gravy or I didn’t use enough garlic.” Cherry plopped down on the bed and patted the spot next to her. “Come on. Tell me everything. Don’t leave anything out.”

  Charlie sat on the bed, and Joy jumped up and curled around her side, sighing with contentment. Or maybe sighing because Charlie smelled clean and like herself again and not a street person.

  “Now, tell me about Sophie,” Cherry said. “Did she say she’s felt Gigi’s presence too?”

  “No, nothing like that. She talked to me about it a few weeks ago, but there’s been so much going on that I haven’t really had time to do much about it. Besides, she didn’t have anything concrete or any evidence. She just said she had this bad feeling about the way Gigi died and how it felt funny to her. Like there was something off or suspicious about the whole thing. Like there was foul play involved.”

  “Foul play. Oh my gosh, poor Gigi.”

  “I don’t really even know what that means.”

  “Oh, stop it. You know what it means. Why didn’t you go to the police or tell anyone about this?”

  “First of all, I’m still not sure there’s really anything t
o Sophie’s suspicions. And secondly, what was I supposed to do, go to the police and be like, ‘Heyyyy, so this teenage girl told me she thinks my grandmother might possibly have been murdered, but we don’t have any actual evidence. Can you check that out?’”

  “All right. I see what you mean.” Cherry chewed on her bottom lip. “Let me think a minute.”

  Charlie patted Joy’s head while she gave her friend a minute to think. The diner owner did make a strange sort of sense. If you believed in that sort of thing. Oh, who was she kidding? Her head was still acting skeptical, but in her heart, she knew something bad had happened to her grandmother.

  “I guess the question comes down to what do you want to do about this? I mean, I know the sheriff. Heck, I went to prom with him. I’d be happy to go down there with you, but I’m seeing a bigger problem.” Cherry raised her eyebrows at Charlie.

  “Well, what is it? Are you going to tell me?”

  Cherry made the symbol of a gun with her forefinger and thumb and mimed shooting it at her. “Bingo. That’s the problem. You keep waiting for everyone to tell you what to do. At some point, you need to put on your big-girl panties and decide some stuff for yourself.”

  Charlie looked out the window and sighed. “I know.”

  “Do you?” The diner owner gestured at the bulging garbage bag leaning against the wall. “Look around you, girl. You’ve been living in garbage and the same clothes for the past several days. You’ve been lying around in that bed, waiting for what? Someone to come in and haul your butt out of it? For Richard Gere to pull up in a limo and take you away from all of this?”

  She thought wistfully of her favorite scene from Pretty Woman, then dismissed the idea, imagining the limo in a cloud of dust as it drove down the long driveway of Tucked Away. Richard was definitely not coming for her.

  Cherry stood up, grabbing the garbage bag with one hand and pausing at the doorway to her bedroom. “I’ve had my eye on you since you got here, and I keep watching you let things happen to you. When are you going to decide that you want to make things happen for you?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m heading back to town. I think you need some time to think and figure out what you’re doing here. You have my number.” With that, the redhead left, pulling the bedroom door shut behind her.

  Charlie slumped on the bed, patting Joy’s head as the dog laid it in her lap.

  Okay. Big-girl panties. I can do this.

  Was Cherry right? Had she been letting everything happen to her? It seemed like she was making decisions, but maybe she was kidding herself.

  She’d come to Montana because she was broke and had been cheated on by her fiancé. If Gigi hadn’t given her Tucked Away, she would still be in New York, most likely living with her mother. Did she travel halfway across the nation because she wanted to or because she thought she didn’t have any other choice?

  And what a mess she had made of things since she’d been here. She hadn’t written a word on her latest book, choosing to blame writer’s block and her mother and the sudden appearance of her father.

  Oh geez, her father. Thirty years of pent-up frustration and feelings of abandonment all laid at the feet of the wrong person. Had she reconciled her feelings of her mother’s deception or just let her mom steamroll over her once again?

  Maybe the uncharacteristic temper-tantrum she’d thrown at the dance was her subconscious trying to tell her something. Like, she was angry.

  Charlie took a deep breath. She was angry. She was angry at her mother for keeping her from her father and letting her believe a lie for her whole life. She was angry at her father for letting her mother get away with it and not trying harder to find his daughter.

  She was mad at Stuart for not loving her enough to stay faithful, and she was mad at Gigi for not staying alive long enough for Charlie to get to meet her.

  She shook her head as a dawning realization hit her like a slap in the face. The person that she was the angriest with was actually herself.

  She was mad at herself for not believing she was worthy of being loved by Stuart or her dad or Zack. She’d spent the majority of her adult life seeing herself as not worth the effort. She’d blamed herself for Stuart’s betrayal, instead of seeing him as the one at fault.

  She had decided long ago that she’d not been valuable enough for her father to stay, so maybe she’d also accepted it too easily when a man had treated her as less than she was.

  She stood and stepped to the dresser. A large mirror sat atop the bureau, and she studied herself. So maybe she was a little too curvy around the hips, but her waist was thin and her stomach was still flat. With the right push-up bra, she had pretty good breasts, and people had always told her that she had nice eyes.

  She’d always considered her long blond hair one of her best assets, but maybe once again, she was selling herself short. Maybe her best assets were the ones you couldn’t see. She’d always thought of herself as a pushover, but possibly she was just a nice person, who didn’t get involved in the meanness of office politics or gossip.

  She thought about the time she had spent with Sophie. Except for this last horrible mistake and that thing about almost running her over with the truck, she’d been a pretty good friend to the girl. She had listened and cared and hugged and laughed with the teenager. Considering how protective she was of the girl, maybe she even had a few mothering instincts in her.

  Pushing her shoulders back and standing up straighter, Charlie continued to find things to like about herself. She was a pretty good writer. Wait, not pretty good. Damn good. She was a damn good writer. She could tell a great story and make readers laugh and fall in love with her characters.

  Joy whined at her feet, and she realized that although she was new at it, she was still good with animals. If a relationship with a baby calf, a mangy mutt, and a cranky goat were the indicators, she was doing all right.

  She was kind and thoughtful. She was funny, if at times a little too sarcastic, but she could still usually coax a smile out of someone if she tried. She could make chocolate chip cookies, drive a stick-shift, and was an excellent Scrabble player. She had great legs and looked good in pink. Especially hot pink cowboy boots.

  The thought of those boots and the night she met Zack had her self-love pep talk come to a crashing halt. For all the great things she could come up with about herself, she had still hurt the two people who deserved it the least. How could she have let her petty moment of selfishness ruin everything she’d wanted so badly?

  But had she wanted it badly enough? Had her feelings of low self-worth made her believe that she didn’t really deserve this life with Zack, so when a big-boobed hussy told her she was nothing, she believed it? Had she sabotaged herself under the misguided conception that she’d never deserved Zack’s love in the first place? Did she deserve it?

  Maybe she did before, but not now. Zack and Sophie had felt the same sense of abandonment that Charlie had struggled with her whole life. And then she had been ready to desert them.

  Shame filled her.

  She didn’t deserve Zack and Sophie. But she did deserve to be loved. She deserved the new life that Gigi had offered her. She loved Zack and Sophie enough to fight for them. To prove to them that they were worth it. That they didn’t warrant the hurt she’d caused them, even inadvertently.

  Especially Sophie.

  She vowed to find a way to prove to the girl that this mistake belonged to her alone and beg the teen’s forgiveness.

  That was only one of the things she needed to set straight. She could work on her relationships, but her first priority right now was Tucked Away. Her grandmother had given her this farm, and she couldn’t lose it to a corporate railroad or her greedy parents.

  She needed to believe in herself. She was strong enough to do this. One person had believed in her. She’d never met Geraldine Tucker, but somehow her grandmother knew that the Tucker blood ran in Charlie’s veins. Not just in her DNA, but in her heart a
nd her soul.

  She had felt something the minute she’d stepped through the doors of the farmhouse of Tucked Away. She had felt a peace, like she belonged. Like she was home.

  And she wasn’t about to let some wrinkled-suit, broken-glasses-wearing man from the L & C Railroad take that away from her. She owed it to Gigi to protect her land. And she owed it to herself. This was her land now. Her farm. And as long as she was breathing, she was going to fight to keep it.

  And that fight needed to start with finding out what happened to Gigi. Picking up her phone from the dresser, she typed in a text message to the red-haired owner of the diner. Meet me at the Sheriff’s office in thirty minutes.

  Charlie slipped on her shoes and whistled for the dog. Taking a deep breath, she was sure she caught the scent of peaches.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The edge of the hard linoleum chair dug into Charlie’s legs as she sat in front of the Sheriff’s desk. She’d made one stop at the Health Center to get the foul-smelling cast cut from her arm, and she absently scratched at the dried pale skin of her wrist.

  Cherry tapped her bright red nails against the side of her chair as they watched Sheriff Taylor Johnson study the open folder on his desk.

  Cherry had told her that she and the Sheriff had been high school sweethearts and they hadn’t ended on the best of terms. From the minute the Sheriff had entered the room, Charlie had sensed the emotion between them, like a mixture of nervousness, fear, and sexual tension. Like crazy sexual tension, so thick that not even a knife could cut through it. This was more like chain-saw cutting kind of tension.

  She’d have to ask Cherry more about that later. Right now, she needed to focus on what happened to her grandmother.

  Both women jumped as the Sheriff slapped the folder closed.

  “Well?” Cherry leaned forward, obviously anxious to hear what the Sheriff found, and inadvertently giving him a better view of the massive cleavage she sported from the top of her snug wrap-around dress.