The Cul-de-Sac War

by Melissa Ferguson

  “I was about to say that myself. I couldn’t help but notice the label on the box—” He looked down at the Quest logo stamped along one side. “So, you got a fishing reel after all.” He paused, then awkwardly placed the box in her arms.

  When he stepped back again, he rubbed the back of his neck. “It was just . . . nice to see you ended up getting one . . . after all. After we talked about it that one day . . .”

  “A fishing pole?” Evie said, surprise clear in her voice as she looked at the illustration of the rod on the cardboard box.

  Bree coughed discreetly.

  Evie jerked her head to Bree. Had Evie penciled in her eyebrows properly, everyone would’ve seen them fly to the sky. “Oh yes! The fishing reel! For trout fishing. Yes, indeedy. I did buy that.” She clutched the box to her chest. “Because I want to fish. So badly.”

  They stood silent for a moment, Gerald rubbing the back of his neck while it turned red, and Evie batting her lashes at him at 90 miles per hour.

  Good grief.

  Bree had put the bait in their hands. In their literal hands. All the two of them had to do was take the next step.

  Say it.

  Bree squinted through the window, willing Gerald to say the words.

  Seconds ticked by.

  C’mon, man, say it.

  SAY. IT.

  Bree exhaled and pushed herself off the window. She walked to the stairs, then loudly hopped off the bottom step and marched through the living room like she hadn’t a care in the world. Halfway through, she stopped as though noticing the two of them for the first time. Her leg halted in the air, and she pivoted toward them.

  “Oh? What’s that, Evie? Looks like a . . . fishing pole?” Bree set her hands on her hips. Put on her serious face. “Evie, have you got someone to show you how to fish? Don’t tell me you’re thinking of going out to the Holston all alone, when you can’t swim—”

  “You can’t swim?” Gerald interjected.

  “Of course I can swim—I’m just—” Evie began.

  “I can take you out sometime,” Gerald said, quick as a beat and then halting as though realizing what he’d said. “I’d just . . . uh . . . I’d hate to see a lady such as yourself out there, stuck in high water.”

  Bree nodded, fingers pressed to her lips. “But can I trust that you will keep my dear, dear friend Evie safe?”

  “Oh.” Gerald was nodding. “The safest.”

  “I don’t know,” Bree said. She folded her arms across her chest. “Maybe you ought to get some good swimming lessons under your belt first, Evie.”

  “Lessons? Oh, well . . .” Gerald had his hat off now and was playing with it in his hands. “I don’t mean to puff myself up, ’course, but I did happen to be on the swim team back in high school. We got third place in state.”

  Bree popped her hip out as her eyebrows rose. “Oh really? Is that so?”

  “If we could, maybe, find a pool—” Gerald began.

  “Like the one that’s open at Virginia High Tuesday through Friday from four to seven and every Saturday from nine to one?” Bree said, and then shrugged. “Because I’ve heard that’s a good one.”

  Bree left the two of them and moved to the dining room, knowing her job was done. They could handle the details of their date without her hovering.

  With one major checkmark on the day’s to-do list done, Bree snagged her plate from the dining room and moved to the kitchen. She leaned against the counter with her plate and glanced through the window. Chip stood there inside his own house, moving around his own kitchen.

  She would’ve surrendered some of her frustration with him, even just momentarily, had the sign not caught her eye.

  Still there. Mocking her.

  YOU’VE GOT MAIL.

  PS: THANKS FOR THE SERENADE

  Of course, she was well aware she started the paper-to-window memos. If THIS ISN’T OVER for Bree, then apparently it wasn’t going to be for him either. Bree took a brooding sip of the now lukewarm coffee and began to list Chip’s faults in her head. First the rude driving, then the water line, then the repeated assaults from his dog, then the fact he lied to her about the Invisible Fence, then knocking on her door at three in the morning to give her the fake message that he had moved it, then daring to chuckle to himself every single time something bad happened to her because of him . . .

  She wasn’t losing her mind, was she? He really had put up that sign, even if no one else was there to see it. He was toying with her. And what had she done so far? What had been her act against him? Nothing. Just a single, tiny little episode involving music and tap dancing.

  If she could just figure out how to drive him half as crazy as he was driving her.

  For that matter, if she could only get that man to leave.

  After all, he was one of those McBride sons; he probably owned dozens of properties all over town. If she could just get him to change his mind about his so-called treasure of a home. Just make him flip the house to some far less annoying owner—like a family with eight kids, or an aspiring tuba player—well, she’d be doing everyone a favor. He could make loads of money selling it and find himself a nice residential house somewhere far, far away. He with his holey T-shirts and alluring five-o’clock shadows could marry Ashleigh, and they could move together into the country.

  Where they could have perfect shiny-haired, brown-eyed babies together.

  If only there were some way to make him less comfortable—

  Bree’s eyes narrowed as she watched him. The way he stood at the sink the last several minutes, staring out thoughtfully, coffee in hand, like her. The way he looked at the mountains. The—her eyes followed his—perfect panoramic view of the Appalachian Mountains.

  Bree set her mug on the counter so hard the coffee jostled and spilled a bit.

  “Where are you going?” Evie said gruffly, moving into the kitchen. “We’ve got some talking to do—”

  “We’ll talk in a minute,” Bree said, snatching her keys off the key post and yanking the door open. She turned quickly to Evie. “Evie. What does your lifestyle book say about planting trees?”

  “Trees? How are you going to pay for trees?”

  “I’m not!”

  Chapter 14

  Chip

  Chip woke up Friday morning smiling.

  He went down the stairs, whistling “Singin’ in the Rain,” smiling.

  He hummed along as he made his breakfast, smiling.

  And when he opened up his email at the start of the workday to find the inbox sitting at eighty-two new emails from places like Women’s World saying, “Thank you for joining our daily newsletter! See below for 52 Easy Steps to Melting That Belly Fat Away,” his smile grew into laughter.

  “Touché,” Chip murmured, taking pains to scroll to the bottom of each email and unsubscribe. And the ones with the dodgy unsubscribe buttons . . . Oh, it was clever.

  Chip paused halfway down one. Scanned the paragraph. Paused on the phrase, “With our 100 percent natural clay and seaweed hair removal cream, you can remove stubborn, overgrown hair from your legs in minutes.” Clicked Forward. Swiftly typed in her email.

  Wrote beneath the subject, “I think this one was meant for you? I’m so glad to see you are doing something about this.”

  Hit Send.

  It was truly a wonderful world.

  Until, glancing up to her window, he saw the newly posted sign.

  And then heard the rumble of the truck down the road.

  Chip stared out his kitchen window at an excavator making its way toward Bree’s backyard. Then his eyes ticked over to the sign taped to Bree’s window:

  OH, CHRISTMAS TREE.

  He knew something was up. He just didn’t know how high.

  He began to get the sense of it when he saw a semitruck bearing three fifteen-foot fir trees following the excavator, which started digging right on the other side of his fence.

  A while later he saw a hard-hatted man peer down and say, “About tw
o more feet should do it.”

  The excavator responded with another dip of its massive claw.

  The man put a hand up and the hoe stopped.

  Chip was still staring, thirty minutes later, as the trees were transferred from the back of the semi into his neighbor’s backyard. They thudded into the ground, tall and green. Solidifying his new reality: his million-dollar view was obliterated.

  * * *

  “Ms. Littleton is just finishing up a meeting at the moment. She’ll be on a work trip for the remainder of the week, but she’ll be happy to give you a call back when she returns.”

  “Next week?” Chip’s attention fell away from the hideous trees and refocused on the phone conversation. Never in the four years he’d worked at McBride and Sons had Ms. Littleton, bank manager of Third Bank and Trust, ever put him on hold, much less told him she’d have to call him back in a week. Sure, he was on his own now, but seriously?

  This woman wasn’t ignorant. She had to know that he knew what he was doing. Chip pushed an open door on his new slow-close cabinet. It was a bit off balance and slammed.

  He pressed the phone to his other ear. “I just need one minute of her time. Please. This is Chip McBride.”

  “I know, sir. I relayed your message: Chip McBride wants to speak with you regarding upping his line of credit for a new project.”

  “Did you add the urgent part? Did you say it was urgent?”

  He popped the screen door open—it creaked loudly—and moved down the rotting back steps.

  “I did, sir. I’m sorry. She’s tied up the rest of the day.”

  In the past four years, whenever she had been “tied up” and unavailable to someone else, it had been because he needed her time. Back then, Ms. Littleton would halt whatever meeting, drop whatever call, and throw whatever customer into whatever sitting area, plying them with coffee and lollipops, in order to accommodate him. The woman—the bank for that matter—tripped over their feet for him. Oh, how the tables had turned.

  Chip swallowed hard. Fine. If this was how they were going to treat him when he was on his own without Daddy’s dollar bills, it was better to know now.

  His phone indicated an incoming call from one of his subcontractors.

  “I see. Well, I’ll look forward to her call next week.” If I haven’t found a new bank by then.

  He switched the line.

  “What’s up, Andy?”

  “We’re not going to be able to drop off that dumpster to Kingston Road on Tuesday. Johnny said they’re going to need to keep my last one for another week, and . . .”

  Chip listened as Andy went down the rabbit trail of explaining who needed which one where, and for how long, and why.

  Half listening, Chip stopped next to his fence.

  Looked up to the towering firs.

  Half of his mountain view, gone. The entire right half of his perfect, panoramic view of the Blue Ridge Mountains, ruined. Decimated by three fat, overstuffed Christmas trees spanning the length of their fence line.

  Chip’s shoulders tensed as he heard her voice.

  “It’s absolutely perfect, Theo. I can’t thank you enough.”

  He turned slowly toward her elevated back porch.

  There she was, leaning on the rail, slender and tall in loose, threadbare jeans and a pale beige sweater. Tesla Man stood at her side; Evie sat on a chair behind them. Bree’s hair was shinier than he’d ever seen it, a loose bun high on top of her head. There was a shimmering pinkness to her cheeks, and he was fairly certain it was the first time he’d seen her in makeup—real makeup, not of the green Shrek variety. But the thing that was shining most of all were her eyes. They positively glittered.

  That woman.

  As if sensing his stare, she turned her head and refreshed her smile like she was noticing him for the first time. She put her hand on Theo’s arm.

  “Well, hello, neighbor. What do you think of the new and improved backyard? I felt so stimulated by the hard work you were pouring into your own home, and then was so inspired by that natural beautification article in the Beyond Off-the-Grid magazine that popped up at our front door. It got me thinking.”

  She looked over her shoulder to Evie. “We should seek to . . . revitalize our world with the raw, simple materials of nature’s bounty. Isn’t that how it goes, Evie?”

  Evie nodded and gave two thumbs up.

  Bree turned her grin back to him. “So when Theo thought of his quaint family Christmas tree farm in Damascus, and all those lonely oversized Fraser firs too big to get cut down and stocked for Christmas—”

  “Actually,” Theo interrupted, “I believe you were the one to bring up the farm—”

  “I just knew we had the perfect opportunity to give them a new home,” Bree continued. “Wasn’t it generous of Theo’s family to donate them to our cause? And aren’t they just divine?”

  Her profile shifted toward them, a picture of innocent happiness. “I could just stare at them all day. Couldn’t you?”

  “Andy, I’m gonna have to call you back,” Chip said and dropped the phone from his ear.

  His eyes shifted from her to the hideous trees.

  In that moment, things changed.

  The woman had gone too far.

  * * *

  Saturday night Ashleigh stood at her usual spot beside the door while Chip got ready for their dinner date. The pile of magazines on the floor beside the door—no doubt just a fraction of the ones to come—however, was anything but usual.

  “Chip? Are you having any . . . health troubles?” she said, eyeing the magazine with the headline, “Witch Hazel! The Magical Homeopathic Way to Clear Up Hemorrhoids.”

  “My back has been killing me since that fall on my bike last week,” Chip called over his shoulder as he worked on his tie in the mirror of the open bathroom.

  Through the reflection, he saw her nudging the magazine with her shoe to reveal the one underneath. Her eyes widened like one of those anime cartoon characters, her cheeks flushing a rosy pink. “And . . . do you know, I happened to pop into Jared jewelry store the other day with Gracie—”

  His brow furrowed. “Jared? Isn’t that out in Knoxville?”

  She waved a hand. “She was getting her ring cleaned—”

  “She had to drive to Knoxville to get her ring cleaned?”

  “Anyway, I saw this stunning French-set halo diamond ring. I was actually so surprised it was in store at such a value . . .”

  His fingers paused on the tie, and he swiveled around to look at her. Then the magazine at her feet. Ah. The Diamond Nexus catalog.

  He turned back around.

  “You know, I just really, really like that”—she enunciated each word—“French. Set. Diamond. Halo. Style.” She started nudging the stack with her toe again. “Of course all the bands are beautiful, and it’s the sentiment that counts, but if I were so lucky as to pick a ring, I would go with the—Chip?”

  She stopped. Her tone was higher than usual, which was truly saying something. “Chip? Is there something we need to discuss? Any . . . area of your life that is out of control?”

  Terrific. He knew what she’d seen. His fingers finished up his tie.

  “No,” he called over his shoulder. “I do not have an addiction to eating chalk.” He turned and gestured to the special-edition psychology magazine for people struggling to overcome all addictions. The one in bold scribbled chalk across the front was “Pica Addiction: Your Nasty Secret.”

  “I believe that one belongs to my neighbor.”

  “Really?” She nudged the magazine halfway covering it aside. “It has your address.”

  “It was a mistake.”

  “It says right here, Chippy the Chipmunk McBride.” She paused, her perfectly formed eyebrows tweaking up. “That’s odd.”

  “Believe me, Ashleigh, I can spell my own name. And I don’t make jokes better suited for third graders. But if you’d prefer to investigate the house and pull together an intervention group . . .�
�

  It took several more minutes of defending himself and declaring he had not ordered the magazines before she let the matter go. Still, as they drove into town and walked across the sidewalk and into Rain, he couldn’t help noticing Ashleigh rubbing the ring finger of her left hand with her thumb and casting a few wistful looks down. Good grief. The woman was genuinely disappointed he wasn’t actually a man with a chalk problem, in need of hemorrhoid cream, obsessed with tropical birds, in search of an engagement ring.

  It was impossible, but it was almost like Bree knew he would’ve dropped the magazines by the door in his haste, and she knew Ashleigh would stand there by the front door, waiting on him, and see it. He could never prove it, but he’d bet everything those magazines hadn’t been for him. They were for her. To get to him. And that fact was both irritating and impressive.

  * * *

  The next day, standing in front of the Barter, he was still ruminating on how she did it.

  It was a temperate Sunday afternoon, cars inching along bumper to bumper on Main Street in the post-church rush to get out of ties and dresses and whip up potato salad for Sunday family suppers. Weekenders slowed to take pictures of the iconic Barter building with its charming exterior and medieval-looking flags. Or they gawked at the sprawling estate of the Martha Washington Inn and wondered who was in the mysterious limousines that deposited guests at the lobby.

  Chip hadn’t told his mother why he couldn’t attend that afternoon’s supper, opting instead for a vague explanation. “Something’s come up, Mom,” he said. She used her time-honed mothering skills to express disappointment over the phone without saying one word about her disappointment over the phone, and frankly, he wasn’t sure what she was more disappointed by: that her baby boy wasn’t able to make it, or that they would have to go without the cornbread he usually brought.

  “Mr. McBride,” Mr. Richardson said, stepping off the Barter’s bottom step toward him.

  Chip hopped up from the crosswalk and met him beneath the sign containing the words A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He moved forward to shake Mr. Richardson’s hand but received a hearty slap on his shoulder instead. The administrator turned on his wingtip heels and guided him inside.