by Ellie Hall
Melissa’s eyes widened. “You thought I was the type of woman you had to run away from. Like Fatal Attraction level.” She stared at me for several seconds, and I wondered if I was about to get slapped. But then she threw back her head and laughed until tears ran down her face. “Oh, dear. I get it now.” She wiped a tear away. “You were so afraid of me.”
“So, you’re not mad?”
She smiled. “I haven’t decided yet. I think Granny’s mad enough for the both of us. You have not endeared yourself to me in her eyes. She thought you were sweeping up that grass seed the other night so you could steal it.”
“How do I get on her good side? Flowers?”
Melissa shook her head. “She’d find that presumptive.”
“Okay. No flowers. Chocolate?”
“Hate, hate, double hate.”
“She hates chocolates or she hates cliché gifts?”
“The second one. She’d call you a cheesy butt-kisser for sure.”
“Would she use those exact words, though?”
“Yes.”
I laughed. Granny was growing on me.
Melissa turned to look at me. “There’s no other way. You’ll just have to save my life right in front of her.”
“Come again?”
“Yeah, that will work. Clear your schedule for tomorrow night. Do you think your brother and sister would be up for playing villains?”
I had no words and no clue what she was talking about. My mouth opened and closed. Melissa just laughed at my expression and kissed my cheek. “Save the chocolates and flowers for Natalya. She also hates you. But on a positive note, my mom thinks you’re cute.”
15
Melissa
“Granny, I can’t seem to ditch this tail.” I glanced in my rear view, where Parker was two cars back. I could see Lauren and Clay leaning forward from the back seats. Their grins were obvious, even from this distance. Apparently, summer vacation was a little more boring than they’d anticipated. They’d been happy to join in on my adventure with Granny today.
Granny picked up the set of binoculars on the console between us and turned around to look.
“No, don’t.” I lowered them from her face. She might have to meet them for real someday, and it would be helpful if she didn’t think Connor came from a family of hardened criminals. “We have to act like we don’t know they’re following. Best case scenario, we lose them in the next few miles and then circle back to our destination.”
“But I could snap a clear picture of them with these bad boys.”
She was fascinated with the camera binoculars I’d brought. High-tech spy gear, in her mind. I’d be deleting so many pictures of innocent bystanders off them before returning them to Connor’s family. His stepmom used them for bird-watching.
“What happens if we miss the meeting?” Granny asked, glancing at the car’s clock. “You said we have to be there at six sharp. That’s in ten minutes.”
I took a deep breath in. “We’ll make it. Leave it to me.”
Right on schedule, Parker dropped away from tailing me and drove east towards the field we’d picked as our handoff location. I was giving him a five minute head start to get there. The field was down the road from Sun Valley Heavy Equipment Rental, the business Connor’s dad owned.
I made a point of mentioning Sun Valley when we drove by, and that Connor was there today working with his dad. Granny only harrumphed, but I hoped his nearby location was a detail she’d remember later. Otherwise his rescue would seem all too convenient.
The weeds in the field were overgrown, and a property owner had long ago abandoned rusty farm tools here and there, along with a few old cars that hadn’t moved in at least ten years. Basically, it made a pretty great lookout location.
I parked my car behind one of the abandoned trucks and turned to Granny. “Remember, if anyone asks, we’re bird-watching. Got it?”
“I got it.” Granny picked up the wide brim hat I’d brought her with the fake stuffed birds all over it and stuck it on her head. “You better put yours on, too, Melissa.”
I did, smiling to myself. Once we’d involved Connor’s stepmom in the planning, she’d come up with details I never would have considered, like these hats. She was on the docket for next week to walk right past us on a busy street and hand off a mystery envelope. She already had a disguise picked out.
I got out and ran around to get Granny’s door, helping her into position with her walker and the binoculars. Around the side of the abandoned truck, we had a clear shot to see everything about to go down.
I texted the code word ‘birdstalkers’ to Connor, Parker, Lauren, and Clay, and set in to wait. Because it was so hot, we had decided to keep lag times to a minimum. The last thing we needed was for Granny to get heatstroke out here while playing spy.
“There they are,” I whispered, not thirty seconds later. Parker crept in from the back of the field with a leather briefcase, and Lauren and Clay ducked around a dead farm truck and headed his direction. All three were sporting white ski masks, sun glasses, and safari hats, and I had to bite back a laugh. They looked like backup dancers in a music video, except without the rhythm.
Granny harrumphed. “These pictures won’t help the CIA at all. They could be anyone.”
“Our job was just to see how many showed up. Besides, now we know their approximate height and weight. That’s something.”
“I guess.” Granny went back to looking through the binoculars and snapping images.
Parker handed off the briefcase to Clay, shook hands with both him and Lauren, and then my cell phone rang at full volume, right on schedule.
All three slowly turned to look in our direction, and even as part of the plan, their faceless stares still creeped me out.
Granny dropped the binoculars and gripped my arm. “Melissa, your phone.”
“I’m trying, I’m trying.” I dug my cell out of my back pocket and silenced it while Parker, Clay and Lauren slowly stalked towards us. I’d decided early on with these adventures to never involve weapons, not even fake ones, so they just looked like participants in a cautious game of red light, green light.
I picked up a rock and threw it into the bushes across from us. Two quail let out a warning cry and flew out. The ski masked villains turned to look and froze in their progress.
“Okay, let’s go, Granny.” I got her in on the passenger side and quickly folded up her walker. Then I ran around and jumped in, gunning it just enough to give it a sense of urgency, but not so much that my car would bottom out. I pulled onto the street and looked behind us.
Parker, Clay, and Lauren were jumping in Parker’s truck and following. They had to be sweating buckets in their costumes. Just my nervousness about pulling this off had turned me into a sweaty mess.
Granny glanced behind us. “Where do we go?”
I tossed her my phone. “Connor’s in my list of missed calls. Call him and tell him we’re being followed, and we’re coming to his dad’s office.”
“Missed calls?” Granny stared down at my shiny phone like it might be alien tech. She pressed her finger on it cautiously and frowned when it didn’t do whatever she was expecting. She pressed on it again and again until Siri boomed out, “I don’t understand.”
Granny stared at the phone. “Me either. Who is this?”
The phone didn’t answer, which really ticked her off. I grabbed it out of her hand before she could bang it on the glove box. So much for that part of the plan. Hopefully, Granny wouldn’t be suspicious of Connor showing up like a genie the second we pulled in. Which was in about thirty seconds. At the end of the street, I turned into the Sun Valley Heavy Equipment parking lot and scrolled down to Connor’s name, pressing send.
He answered on the first ring. “Melissa?”
“Hey, we need help. Some bad guys are following us. We’ve just pulled into your parking lot.”
I hung up and turned to Granny. “He’ll be here in a minute.”
Parker
drove up next to us, and Clay and Lauren got out to circle our car.
I hit the lock button. “You okay, Granny?”
She glanced at the two circling and balled her fists. “It takes a lot to scare me.”
That’s what I was afraid of. This adventure would be a lot to one-up. Spotting Connor sprinting towards us filled me with complete relief. This meant the end of our adventure. He yelled at Clay and Lauren, pretended to get in a fist fight with Clay, and then ran them off back to Parker’s truck. After they took off down the road, I hit the unlock button and jumped out.
“Thank you.” I went to hug Connor and bumped him with my bird hat instead. He pulled it off my head and smoothed back my curls, probably catching a bit of sweat that was beading off my forehead.
“I’m so gross,” I murmured.
“Not gross.” He was so going to kiss me. I knew it. I was anticipating it.
“You two forgotten I exist over here?” I turned to see Granny leaning out of the car, looking quite irritated. Not because we’d been threatened by faceless bad guys, but because Connor was paying attention to me. And in that moment, I knew it wouldn’t matter if Connor pulled me out of a burning building. He wasn’t going to win her over because he wasn’t Damien.
I’d just have to keep them apart from now on. Connor didn’t deserve to be held against a standard that didn’t exist. He didn’t have to win her over, or Natalya over. My relationship with him could just be mine, and mine alone.
16
Connor
Melissa was going to be the death of me. I couldn’t imagine a day without her in it, and knew she felt the same way about me, but no one in her life was allowed to know. Not Natalya, not Granny, not her parents, not even the mailman. The mail truck had pulled up one day while we were out watering the grass together, and she’d dropped my hand like a hot potato and pretended I didn’t exist until it drove off. I also hadn’t missed the way she’d angled her stack of mail away from me so I couldn’t see it.
That was what led me here, to this Monday afternoon, a month after the stupid car chase that ended with Granny giving me the cold shoulder. Melissa was in her bathroom freshening up after work, and I was staring at the stack of mail on her counter.
Okay, staring is not quite accurate. I was also sifting through it. But that was it. I wasn’t going to open anything, not even the letter on the bottom of the stack addressed to The Beautiful Melissa Cooke. It had no return address, but I didn’t need three guesses to know who it was from.
Damien was like toxic mold—under the surface, eating away at the foundation of our relationship. I needed an expert to find out the extent of the damage. Unfortunately, I was dating the expert, and the thought of asking her to get rid of his influence had my insides twisting.
The bathroom door opened down the hall, and the mail jumped out of my hands and fell all over the floor. I was such an idiot. I scooped it up as fast as I could, just in time to be holding it all when she walked out and stared at me.
“What are you doing?” She grinned at my panicked face, but then realizing what I was holding, she cleared her expression to something neutral and took it out my hands. Walking over to the recycle can, she sorted and dropped the junk mail into it. I noticed the letter from Damien was included in the junk mail, though she didn’t rip it in half like the credit card offers. Did that mean she would fish it out later after I left?
I couldn’t take it anymore. The not talking. The not knowing.
“Was that a letter from Damien?”
She froze. “Yes. I don’t write him back and I haven’t opened one in months. He sends Granny’s letters to me, too. Like he’s afraid I wouldn’t go see her unless he gave me a reason.”
“You should tell Granny the truth.”
“No.” Her answer was immediate and firm, and I almost backed off. But I had to know why.
“She can take it.”
“She can’t. He’s all she has. Her son pays for her care, but he won’t visit. No one will visit. It’s just me and Damien’s letters. If I tell her, she won’t even have that.”
“You don’t know that. Maybe she’d write and talk some sense into him.”
Melissa whirled on me. “And then what? He comes home and takes his dogs back? I like my life the way it is. I don’t want him to know I know. I don’t want anything to change. Yeah, my life is hard, but it’s my hard. It’s manageable.” She stared at me, looking ashamed, but also determined.
“You won’t even change it to include me?”
The pause after was like a bullet to my heart.
“Not right now.”
I took in a deep breath. I needed to leave. This felt final, and I wasn’t ready to beg when Melissa couldn’t even see what I was asking for. “I should go home and get some things done. I’ll see you later.”
17
Melissa
The grass was nice and thick now. Thick enough for me to sit on it while the sprinkler soaked me. This was usually the time Connor came over and made dinner with me, but we hadn’t done that in a week, and I couldn’t go inside and face that yet. I’d been sitting here for ten minutes, trying to figure out how to fix the mess that was my life while a sprinkler pegged me in the back of the head. Buster and Sarge watched me from the other side of the lawn, their expressions not necessarily judgmental, but a little concerned. Some women eat cookies when they’re sad. Me? I was okay with staying right here.
What exactly was I supposed to say to Granny? I didn’t have proof Damien wasn’t in the witness protection program. I could hire an investigator, I supposed. Get photographic evidence. But I didn’t have the money for that, nor did I have money to take Damien to court if he decided to come back and take his dogs.
Of course, he could do that whether I kept up his lie or not. He could stop writing Granny at any point, for any reason. I had been loyal to him in every way possible, both when we were together, and every moment since. Mostly out of fear.
And the one guy who had deserved my loyalty? I’d ditched him at the first sign of pushback. Connor was probably watching me out his window and patting himself on the back that he’d dodged this bullet.
My neighbor across the street came outside to move her garbage can. I waved, letting her know I was fine. I was so not fine.
“Everything okay?” she called out.
“Yep. Just cooling off.” I jumped to my feet, finally motivated to move by sheer embarrassment. I couldn’t stay in limbo anymore. Not in this yard, not in life.
After getting the dogs fed and taking a quick shower, I called up Natalya first. She’d been a casualty of all the things I’d been avoiding lately, and I owed her an apology.
“Melissa?”
She sounded so surprised to hear from me that I burst into tears.
“I’ve been a bad friend.”
“Yes, but it’s okay. I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
Natalya laughed. “Oh, but I do. I knew the second you started making excuses about hanging out that you were dating Connor. And while I was fighting mad about it at first, I’ve come to terms with it. Oh, no. Is that why you’re sad? Did Connor break your heart? I’ll break his knee caps.”
“What? No. No breaking anything. I’m not sad about Connor. Okay, I am sad about him, but we’ll get to that. There’s something else I have to tell you. It’s about Damien.”
“Did you write and tell him it’s over? The poor man. But you can’t feel guilty for moving on. It was inevitable with your situation.”
“Damien’s not in the witness protection program.” I ripped it off like a Band-Aid, not wanting Natalya to sympathize with my fake plight a second longer. “He only told me that so I’d take the dogs and Granny when he left.”
There was a long pause. A really long pause.
“Nat?”
“I’m here.”
And she was. She listened to my whole story, and then walked me through everything I needed to say to Granny.
“Do you want me to come with you?” she asked.
I thought about it. Part of me wanted to say yes, but while it would make me feel better to have her there, it wouldn’t help Granny. “No, I’ll go. Thank you, Nat. For everything.”
I glanced at the clock. I had an hour before visiting hours were over. Normally on Tuesday nights, Granny was watching her recording of The Beautiful and Reckless, which they taped for her during her lunch hour when everyone else wanted to watch the Game Show Network. But I was pretty sure the soap opera’s season was over, and it was on reruns.
Either way, if I waited another day I’d find more reasons to put it off. I called the retirement center and told them to notify Granny I’d be there in ten minutes. I didn’t want to talk to her until we were face to face.
I gathered up Damien’s letters to me before heading out the door, including the letter I’d fished out of the recycle can after Connor confronted me about it. As many times as I’d considered burning the whole pile, something always held me back. While I drove, my mind hit dead end after dead end. Nothing I considered saying seemed right.
When I showed my I.D. inside and was escorted down to Granny’s room, she was waiting for me by the window, looking out on the garden where hummingbirds often zipped back and forth. Of course, Granny’s gaze wasn’t trained on the hummingbirds. She was watching two construction workers repairing the sidewalk on the other side of the breezeway.
“Tabitha has been in and out her door, offering them cold drinks and asking questions.” Granny said in greeting. “Pestering those two handsome young things. Ridiculous for someone her age.”
“Mmm, hmm. Very ridiculous.” As was this pot calling the kettle black.
She turned to me and spotted the stack of letters in my hands. “What are those?”