“And here’s the veil,” she said, handing Melb a headband. Melb put it on and looked into the mirror.
Her first impression was that she looked an awful lot like John McEnroe in his early tennis days when sweatbands were all the rage. But then her eyes caught the tulle flowing down her back like the hair of Rapunzel. She was a princess.
“Perfect.”
The woman said, “Let me show you the dressing room where you can try it on.”
“No need. Destiny brought this dress to me.”
“But … it’s a size ten.”
“I’m going to shed a few pounds before the wedding, don’t worry.”
“But—”
“And I know these kinds of dresses always run big anyway,” Melb said with a wink. The woman didn’t wink back.
“But—”
“And I’ve got a girdle.”
The woman said nothing more, but by the somber expression on her face, she knew the woman had her doubts. Yet Melb had no doubts whatsoever. After all, the dress had been waiting for her since 1989.
The woman cordially handed her the receipt and asked, “When is your wedding?”
“Valentines Day. Isn’t that just perfect?”
“Best wishes.” The saleswoman handed her a sleek gray dress bag and nodded in dismissal.
Melb swung the dress over her shoulder and sauntered out of the store with unspeakable joy, practically prancing with each step. The perfect dress.
And only $550 over budget. Oliver would understand.
CHAPTER 3
“ORDER! ORDER, PEOPLE!”
A dozen people stood in the community center, shivering beneath their coats because nobody knew how to turn the heat on. They now glanced in the speakers direction as if they had just noticed she was behind the podium.
“Come now, we don’t have rabies. Let’s scoot together a little bit.”
The small crowd glanced at one another and scooted a few chairs inward, still looking sparse among all the shiny silver chairs that lined the community center conference room in perfectly neat rows.
Missy Peeple would not allow herself to feel it, but inside she knew disappointment threatened like a bad case of heartburn. This was by far the smallest crowd ever to attend a meeting she called. No thanks to the Thanksgiving Scandal, as it was now known, she’d lost credibility within the town that she’d loved so much. When she passed townspeople on the street, they scowled at her now instead of nodding with the respect to which she had been accustomed.
Still, she would not be deterred. She had a vision for this town. She knew it would work. In fact, she’d bet her whole life savings on it just a little over two weeks ago. It had cost her nearly everything she owned, but she knew it would work. It had to.
The glum faces that stared back at her needed inspiration, and she was here to give it to them. She made herself stand tall, pushing her back straight as she held onto her cane.
“I’ve called this meeting today,” she began, “to give you hope. As I’m sure all of you have noticed, our town has changed. Thanks to Wolfe Boone, who has decided he no longer feels responsible for what happens to our beloved town, we will no longer be known as we were before. But do not fear!” She raised her hand over her head and pointed a knobby index finger skyward. A few people looked up, thinking she was pointing at something. “We will be known! Skary, Indiana, will not be a nothing town with nobody people. We will not sink back into obscurity. Do you hear me? We will continue to be famous. I will see to that.”
“How?” came a voice near the back.
“I have already made a way. Because, my friends, I am smart and determined. And I always have a plan.” She smiled and blinked slowly like the town matron that she was.
“Well, if were not known for Boo, who will we be known for?” asked another voice.
“First of all, let’s kill the pet names, shall we? Wolfe Boone no longer cares about this town, and saying his name with affection, like he means something to us, is just a sad reminder of what he’s done. Secondly, you ask, what shall we be known for? Well, that is my surprise. That is why I am here. To make this very special announcement. From this day forth, Skary, Indiana’s claim to fame will come from … drumroll, please.
The crowd exchanged glances, and then two or three people timidly beat their hands against their knees.
“Cats!” Missy closed her eyes, anticipating cheers from the crowd. Instead she heard at least one hiccup and then mumbling. She opened her eyes to find the crowd looking at one another. “I said … cats!” But still, enthusiasm came only in the form of sporadic hiccuping.
Then someone said, “I don’t get it.”
“What’s not to get?” she asked, her eyes narrowing on a younger man who looked like a farmer.
“I don’t get how cats tie into the name Skary. I mean, it worked with Boo … Wolfe, I mean … because he wrote scary novels and it was this great play-on-words thing. But why would anybody come to Indiana to see a town full of cats?”
“Became,” she said wistfully, “we offer them incentive. We have a theme. All our stores cater to the cat lover. I’ve got more ideas than I could possibly share today, but I’m telling you this could work. We’ve got more cats in this town than we know what to do with. Why not use it to our advantage?”
But the crowd sat silent, staring at her as if she’d lost her mind. For the first time in all her life, Missy Peeple felt inferior. But only for a fleeting moment. Then she said, “Well, let’s have a show of hands of who thinks this would be a good direction to take for our little town?”
One person raised his hand, and Missy saw he was their resident homeless person, Mac something-or-other, who tended to hang around Skary near the holidays because he knew people were generous when they felt guilty for just having spent two hundred dollars on Christmas lights for their home.
“Meeting adjourned,” Missy spat, hobbled down from the platform, and exited through a side door. Outside the day was bright. The eve of Christmas Eve. The streets bustled with last-minute shoppers, darting in and out of stores at a steady pace. Nobody noticed her. They were too busy with their own pathetic lives.
Missy passed by Sbooky’s, now only Booky’s. The S had been taken down four days after Thanksgiving, but you could still see where it had once been. The Haunted Mansion restaurant was now known only as The Mansion. The little town that had rested in the comfort of its fame now sat on the brink of extinction. Every Christmas before, these streets had been filled with tourists. Now only townspeople.
Their faces even seemed cheery. Why did everyone get cheery around Christmas? What was there to cheer about? Annoying lights. Carolers who couldn’t carry a tune. Kids wiping their snotty noses while they whined about what kinds of toys they wanted even though they had more things to do than the prime minister of England.
A jovial woman offered a smile as she passed Missy, apparently not recognizing her as the center of the Thanksgiving Scandal. Missy offered a frightful frown back and kept moving. She just wanted to get home.
Finally, five blocks later, she made it, her limbs tingling and shaky. She stopped to grumble about her neighbor’s lights. The blinking kind.
Why must someone put blinking lights on their house if they must put them on at all? For two whole weeks she must endure the whole night’s sky blinking while she was trying to sleep.
And to top off the annoyance, Mr. Turner had a Christmas tree in his front window whose lights also blinked, but out of unison with his house lights. For Missy Peeple it represented exactly what Christmas was … a mad, chaotic mess of electrically fed cheer.
She turned to walk up her porch steps and into her house. Once inside, she threw her coat aside and found her favorite quilt, tucking it over her legs and underneath her as she sat down to rest in her rocking chair.
So the town had not caught her vision for trapping tourists by way of cats. But they soon would. Already she had taken necessary steps to insure it would happen.
She’s used her life savings to place a full-sized ad in two national newspapers that Skary, Indiana, was the most famous cat town in the world.
She couldn’t wait to see the droves of people who would soon be crowding the streets.
“Come in!” Ainsley beamed, embracing Wolfe before he could even get in her doorway. She kissed him and then pulled at his coat playfully.
“My little elf,” he joked, looking around the house. “The decorations look terrific.”
Ainsley grinned. She’d been working on them all day, putting the finishing touches on the house before Christmas arrived. She couldn’t believe she was going to get to spend Christmas as the soon-to-be wife of this extraordinary man. Every day she knew him she grew more and more in love, which she didn’t think was possible. “Let me take your coat,” she said, sliding it off his broad shoulders.
He followed her into the kitchen where she was getting ready to put three small legs of lamb into the oven for dinner. As he slid onto a bar stool at the kitchen counter, she asked, “So how was your first day of work?”
He laughed. “Interesting.”
Her mood shifted. “Wolfe, are you sure this is what you should be doing? Writing is in your blood. It’s all you’ve ever known. Do you think you can turn the switch off just like that? It’s not like you have to work, you know.”
“True.” He sighed. “But for now I’m seeing what God has for me. I know there’s something if I can just find it, you know?”
She squeezed his hand and smiled. “Well, did you learn how to sell a car today?”
“Learned there’s a secret language. I have homework. And tomorrow I learn the secret handshake.”
She giggled. “Well, leave it to Oliver to come up with a secret handshake. Oh, I talked to Melb today! She said she found the most amazing wedding dress.”
“That’s good,” he said. “Have they set a date yet?”
“Valentine’s Day.”
“That’s a week before ours, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, and she felt bad about that, but I told her not to worry. She’d always wanted to get married on Valentine’s Day. It’ll be fine. By the way, I finally composed a list of everything we still need to do before the wedding.” She reached under the counter and pulled out her notebook. Wolfe’s eyes grew large. She laughed and said, “Don’t worry. The list is only the back three pages of this thing. This is my wedding folder. I’ve been putting it together since I was ten years old. It has all my dreams in it. But you can’t look, because it also has the wedding dress I’m making.”
“Oh …,” he said, though she knew he was secretly relieved he didn’t have to look through it. She patted him on the hand and started to prepare the salad. In her thoughts, she noted everything she was going to need to do tomorrow in order to get ready for Christmas. But her mind traveled back and forth between her priority of Christmas dinner and her wedding day. She had a lot to do in just a few weeks, though she’d already done so much since Thanksgiving. The day after Wolfe asked her to marry him, she’d decided on a color scheme and designed her invitations. She was right on schedule.
“So what can I do to help with the wedding plans?” he asked.
“Pick a best man and two groomsmen.”
“A best man and groomsmen,” he repeated, scratching his head. “Do I have to?”
“Of course. You have to have three men standing up there, or it will look unbalanced.”
“Can you hire these people?”
She laughed and shook her head. “Sweetheart, this isn’t hard. You can use my brother, of course. And then how about Oliver and Alfred?”
Wolfe sighed. “Alfred. I wonder what that guy’s up to. I haven’t heard from him since he got fired. I don’t even know if he’s talking to me.”
“Well, he’ll have to talk to you if we ask him to be in our wedding.” She sliced up a carrot. “And knowing Alfred, I’m sure he’s bouncing back just fine.”
Alfred Tennison slouched in the ratty vinyl chair at Gate 46 at La Guardia. It seemed to take energy to breathe these days. While dragging his carry-on behind him through the massive airport (it really should just be called a city and have its own zip code), Alfred had seen five different people reading Wolfe Boone novels. In the same ball of emotion he found anger, despair, grief, and pride, all coiled together. Nobody here knew who he was. But once upon a time he was somebody big. Somebody with power. A brilliant editor. This world had not seen the last of Alfred Edgar Tennison. He had the capability to bounce back. And already, he knew how he was going to do it.
A voice announced it was time to board the plane, and a crowd of people stood up, vying for a position in line, which was absurd since the seats were assigned. Sadly, there was no first class on this plane. Even sadder, he couldn’t afford it anyway.
A small woman stood beside him. She was dressed from head to toe in holiday garb. Alfred glanced twice at her and saw that her earrings were flashing like a Christmas tree and across her chest was a string of gold tinsel. How do you wash that? he wondered. And then prayed she wouldn’t be his seatmate.
She smiled at him as he was noticing that the ends of her shoes sported Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer noses. “You going home for the holidays?” she asked him a squeaky drawl. When he didn’t answer, she simply continued. “I’m from Indiana, but moved to New York to live with my sister who got cancer of the thyroid. But it’s always nice to return home. What parts are you from?”
Alfred shifted his eyes back to the line that dawdled along, everyone staring at the woman with three kids being frisked to the side while security went through her two diaper bags. “I’m not from Indiana.”
“Oh, you’ll love it. It’s a lovely place. Are you planning on spending the holidays there?”
Alfred sighed. The truth of the matter was that he hardly thought about the holidays. He wasn’t big on celebrating the holidays of religions he didn’t practice, in particular the religion that had pretty much turned his career into a train wreck. He rubbed his eyes and ignored the woman, who huffed her way forward, something from her garb jingling like a sleighbell. “Merry Christmas to you too, you jerk,” she muttered.
He rolled his eyes. He couldn’t help being a scrooge. He had nothing to celebrate anyway. All he had was an insane idea. One crazy idea that had dawned in his mind at precisely 3:47 a.m. on a Tuesday morning when he was just about to pop another sleeping pill.
Trudging forward onto the plane, oblivious to the streams of holiday smiles on the flight attendants’ tired faces, Alfred found his seat next to a guy who looked as if he needed a bed.
He hoped all the holiday cheer he was sure to find in Skary, Indiana, would translate into sympathy for him and a willingness to at least hear his idea.
He was just going to have to make sure Wolfe was nowhere around Ainsley when he told her his idea.
CHAPTER 4
SHERIFF PARKER TRIED to keep his eyes on the road, but his attention continued to drift to Thief, who lay morbidly still in the passenger’s seat, wrapped in a warm blanket. Garth said the anesthesia would keep him groggy into the evening. Thief’s eyes blinked, but not in the lazy way that Sheriff Parker was used to. Instead, he stared dully, lifelessly. The sheriff stroked his head and tried to concentrate on just getting home. The air was icy, and the roads could be slick as evening approached.
“It’s okay, boy. You just rest,” he said to the cat. But Thief hardly acknowledged him. Instead he rested his chin on his paws and did nothing but stare forward.
Once home, he took great care removing the cat from the car. He swaddled him and was carrying him to the front door when he heard a strange noise.
“Whoo. Whoo.”
Looking high into the Eastern Red Cedar that sat at the corner of their house, he saw an amazing thing. An owl. As far as he could remember, he had never seen an owl in Skary.
“Whoo. Whoo. Whooo.”
“Who to you, too.” The sheriff noticed the owl was looking at Thief, and he
pulled the blanket over the cat. He’d heard some owls ate unattended cats, and the way Thief was feeling, he would be easy prey. “Get outta here!” he yelled at the owl, but it sat there oblivious to his threat.
Inside, Ainsley jumped up and greeted him, looking at Thief. “Dad! How’d the operation go?”
“According to Garth, it went fine. But Thief seems different.”
“How so?” Wolfe asked as they came into the kitchen.
“Just … different. Garth says it’s the anesthesia.”
“He probably just wants to sleep it off, Dad,” Ainsley said. “Why don’t you put him in his bed, and we’ll check on him later. Dinner’s almost ready.”
He nodded and took the cat upstairs to his deluxe canopy bed that sat right next to his own. He even brought his food and water bowl up from the kitchen and placed it right next to Thief. But Thief hardly raised his head. And wouldn’t look at the sheriff.
Kneeling beside the cat, he said, “You’ll feel better in the morning.” He gave the cat one long stroke, from the top of his head to the tip of his tail, and then left. Thief’s eyes were shut, and his once perky tail lay like limp rope across the bed.
Melb paced the length of her bedroom, biting at her nails and then scraping the skin off her bottom lip with her front teeth. Oliver would be arriving at her home any minute, and she was going to have to break the news to him that she’d gone slightly over budget on her dress. But surely he would see the brilliance of how much money she’d actually saved. The trick came in convincing him without showing him this glorious, three thousand dollar dress that she’d yet to try on.
Lying across her bed, the whole dress seemed swollen with anticipation of draping itself over her body. Catching a glimpse of herself in her full-length mirror, she sucked in her tummy and pulled her shoulders back. Four dress sizes. That’s what she was going to have to lose to get in this gown.
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