Wild Nashville Ways
Page 17
Katie sighed. “Well, it’s not for the faint of heart. I work for one, and I’m married to another. Together, the siblings are three men who were raised by a single father. That tells you all you need to know.”
“Because their mother died young, right?”
Ivy nodded. “Yes. It’s probably understating the case to say they lacked a female influence. They’re arrogant and stubborn and completely unwilling to accept limitations, but they can be surprisingly sweet despite all that alpha-male testosterone.”
“They’re pussycats at times,” Katie agreed. “But never make the mistake of thinking you can pull something over on them. They hate being handled.”
Frannie nodded. “Even as a teenager, Zachary had this incredible self-confidence. I envied him, to be honest. It took me years to feel comfortable in my own skin.”
Ivy smiled. “I don’t think it’s ever easy for a woman to be seen as ‘too smart.’ You must have had female friends, didn’t you?”
“I did. Oddly, though, most of my friends were guys. But it was because I was a tomboy, I suppose. Not athletic, believe me, but more interested in science than makeup and fashion. I was hopelessly awkward.”
The kitchen door swung open, and Zachary walked in. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Frannie. You were cute in a quirky kind of way.” He grinned at Katie and Ivy. “She had these oversize corduroy overalls, one forest green pair and one navy, and she swapped them out with half a dozen T-shirts.”
Frannie gaped. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
“We spent a lot of time together, Bug. I have a damned good memory.”
Katie lifted an eyebrow. “Bug?”
Zachary reached in the fridge for a beer and popped the cap. “Everybody at the Glenderry School for Gifted Children had nicknames, me included.”
“We didn’t pick them,” Frannie said hastily. “Other students, usually upperclassmen, handed them out like toxic candy, and they invariably stuck. Of course, if you were popular like Zachary, they weren’t so bad. Right, Stoner...or Stone Man?”
He shrugged, a light in his eyes. “Bugs are cute. Ladybugs. You know.”
Katie and Ivy gave her identical sympathetic looks. Katie shook her head slowly. “I’ll bet you hated that nickname, didn’t you, Frannie?”
“Oh yes.” Although hearing Zachary speak it casually made it not so bad. He had never said it with malice.
Ivy, bless her, went to bat for wallflowers everywhere. “But look how you turned out, Frannie. You’re tall and gorgeous and brilliantly successful. No one would ever guess that some dumb kid in high school named you Bug. Living well is the best revenge. Isn’t that what they say?”
Though Frannie didn’t have a lot of close friends, mostly by choice, she liked Ivy and Katie. In other circumstances, she might have enjoyed getting to know them better. Her chosen career left little time for socializing, and because she bounced all over the world, she had learned to be self-sufficient. As soon as she started her task at SRO headquarters, she would be immersed in the job. That’s how she worked best. Head down. All her focus on the puzzle.
Looking for one single thread that could lead her to answers.
If such a thread even existed.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Ivy,” Frannie said. “I’ve come a long way since my Glenderry days. Most people harbor a few unpleasant memories from adolescence. Mine aren’t really so bad. It was better than being stuck in a regular public school and not being allowed to study all the things I wanted to... At Glenderry, there were no limits.”
Katie shook her head slowly. “I’m glad you and Zachary had that opportunity.”
Ivy frowned. “But Stoner?”
“It was a joke.” Frannie grinned. “Zachary never touched drugs. Everyone knew that. He was too determined to stay in good shape physically. That’s why it was such an aggravating nickname.”
Zachary sighed. “I was what you might call conflicted. Glenderry was a hell of a good place for me, but I fought that reality every day. I just wanted to be normal.”
Frannie smiled, a smile that started small and grew to include Katie and Ivy and Zachary’s two brothers, who had joined the party in the kitchen. “Oh, come on, Zachary. You were never normal.”
Copyright © 2020 by Janice Maynard
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ISBN-13: 9781488063022
Wild Nashville Ways
Copyright © 2020 by Sheree Henry-Whitefeather
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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