Josie Day Is Coming Home

by Lisa Plumley

  With a professional’s eye, she examined the room again. A ballet barre could go along the left wall. A bank of mirrors, behind it. With the floor buffed and the windows cleaned, the new dance studio would sparkle. Plenty of room for choreography, for group rehearsals, for a sound system….

  Josie’s enthusiasm built. For the first time in weeks, she felt excited about her future. Energized by it. This would be perfect! It was the answer to all her dissatisfaction. How had Tallulah known this was what she needed?

  “It’s a fantastic idea,” she announced.

  “It’s a stupid idea. You can’t do it.”

  Now he’d done it. Josie narrowed her eyes, fixing him with her most determined gaze. If he’d known her better, he’d have known that look didn’t bode well for him.

  “Nobody tells me I can’t do something.”

  “I just did.”

  In emphasis, Luke folded his arms. His biceps bulged, making his cryptic black tattoos flex. His T-shirt flattened against his perfectly taut abs. He really had a spectacular body. Too bad he was such a buzzkill.

  “No,” he added. “No, no, no.”

  That clinched it. If she hadn’t been invested in the idea before, now she was. “Yes,” she said blithely. “Yes, yes, yes. I’m doing it. And nothing you say can stop me.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He stepped nearer, disrupting her cha-cha-cha across the intoxicatingly wide span of dance space. “Try this one on for size. You show me your proof you own this place, and we’ll take it from there.”

  Chapter Four

  Josie hadn’t had proof. Only promises.

  But those—slapped together with her unstoppable zeal and her determination not to leave Blue Moon—were enough to change Luke’s mind about her. Obviously, he should never have allowed her to gallivant on to his property in the first place. But now it was too late. Josie was fully invested in her va-va-voom lady of the manor impression. And he was fully screwed.

  It was possible she was crazy. Seriously. Anybody who could look at his house’s dilapidated old ballroom and see a dance studio had a shaky grip on reality. Hell, anybody who thought one living soul in Donovan’s Corner wanted to samba had a shaky grip on reality.

  He’d started out humoring her. Not wanting to burst her bubble, for whatever idiotic reason. Now he was stuck. Stuck with a loony redhead in his house and a problem he didn’t have time to mess around with. Not if his plans were going to go forward.

  “Damn it, Ambrose. Pick up, you old codger,” he muttered, pacing the short length of the phone alcove at Frank’s Diner. He didn’t have phone service at Blue Moon. And he’d hurled his cell phone into the pine trees during his first week in town, sick of hearing it ring with calls from Donovan & Sons. So now he was stuck using the phone at the prime eatery in Donovan’s Corner. “I want answers.”

  He’d gotten nowhere phoning Winkler, Young, and Dodge, Ambrose’s law firm. The bubbleheaded secretary had informed him that “Mr. Dodge is out of the office indefinitely. I’m sorry, sir.” Then she’d accidentally connected him to a conference call full of Japanese businessmen, leaving Luke more aggravated than he’d started out.

  “Dodge residence. Barbara speaking.”

  Finally. The voice of reason.

  “Barb, it’s Luke.” He took a few minutes to trade small talk with Ambrose’s personal assistant. Then, “Listen, is Ambrose around? I need to—”

  “Oh, sorry, Luke,” Barb interrupted. “He’s officially incommunicado. Headed out on a cruise with Tallulah. They left a couple of days ago. Something about investing in a new line of luxury ocean liners?”

  It figured. Tallulah was always stirring up trouble somewhere. Cradling the phone between his chin and shoulder, Luke listened to Barb describe his aunt’s latest venture.

  As Barb nattered on about fleet-wide capacities, cruising speeds, stateroom specifications, and exotic ports of call, he motioned for the waitress to heat up his coffee. Through the diner’s plate glass windows, Main Street hunkered down, as different from the world Barb was describing as his was from his father’s.

  A mishmash of dive bars, the hardware store, a beauty shop, and a couple of fancy-schmancy southwestern art galleries all crowded into sight. The street was a perfect slice of Donovan’s Corner. Half small town, half tourist trap. His Harley, parked at the curb, was the only sign the twenty-first century had meandered to this part of the state at all.

  “Fine. Thanks, Barb.” He’d heard all he needed to. “Did Ambrose take his cell phone? Because I’ve been calling his cell number, and—”

  “Nope,” she chirped. “It’s right here on his home office credenza. I reminded him, but…you know Ambrose.”

  Yeah, Luke knew Ambrose. He knew Ambrose only ever did what Tallulah told him to do—like bequeath the family’s oldest and most overlooked estate in Arizona to every Tom, Dick, and Josie who crossed Tallulah’s path.

  Already his aunt had given Blue Moon to two other charity cases this year—one, a concierge who’d tracked down Tallulah’s missing shih tzu, Crackers, at the Four Seasons Chicago; the other, an Atlanta psychic who’d supposedly put Tallulah in touch with her husband Ernest’s spirit for two “glorious” minutes. Both the concierge and the psychic had required legal wrangling and an eye-opening tour of the house and grounds before they’d given up their claims.

  There was a reason, after all, Luke had left the estate on the edge of falling apart for the past three months.

  Not that Josie had been discouraged that easily.

  “All right. I’ll try Tallulah.” After a few minutes’ conversation, Luke had the rest of the information he needed—including the name of the cruise line and the particular ship his aunt and Ambrose had taken. “Thanks, Barb.”

  Luke said his good-byes, then hung up. He needed to talk to Tallulah next. To make a shore-to-ship phone call, to send her a telegram—whatever a person did to contact someone who was at sea. But for one long minute, he left his hand on the receiver, in no hurry to embroil himself in another battle with his forgetful aunt.

  The truth was, he worried about her. Her forgetfulness, her grouchiness, her recklessness…. They’d all gotten worse since Ernest had died last year. Blue Moon was only a case in point. Tallulah kept forgetting the place wasn’t one of Ernest’s dozens of properties, hers to fritter away. It was a family legacy—Luke’s legacy. He had to make his aunt understand that she couldn’t keep giving it away to strangers. No matter how damn much she liked them.

  On the other hand, it wasn’t as though Luke couldn’t handle one pesky, long-legged redhead on his own.

  If he knew women—and, let’s face it, he did—Josie would bolt the minute she heard the second floor mice scratching their way through tonight’s midnight snack attack. If she did gut it out until morning, a girlie girl like her would never survive Donovan’s Corner.

  His certainty growing, Luke glanced outside. What he saw there confirmed his suspicions. The dearth of neon, the proliferation of pickup trucks, the stickin-the-mud residents…. No doubt about it. She’d bail out before the weekend was through.

  He’d seen the Enchanté boxes Josie’s stuff was packed in. And the Nevada plates on her heap of a car. He was dealing with Las Vegas Barbie here. There was no way she was going to embrace small town life—no matter how staunchly she insisted that she couldn’t wait for Ambrose to FedEx the finished paperwork and the deed, which was supposed to happen any day now. None of that would matter in the end. Blue Moon belonged to Luke.

  His decision made, Luke loosened his grasp on the phone. Wrangling with his aunt could come later. For now, he’d deal with Josie on his own. It was only a matter of time before she gave up on Blue Moon and accepted Tallulah’s inevitable consolation prize—a different estate. All he had to do was wait Josie out.

  That was going to be no problem. Hell, he figured as he returned to his coffee and ordered a celebratory slice of cherry pie, it was going to be easy.

  Nothing in this town was ever easy. Josie ha
d forgotten that about Donovan’s Corner. The stoplights were all timed funny, because no one was ever in a hurry to get anywhere. The residents were hard to deal with, because at least ten percent of them hadn’t bothered to turn on their hearing aids. And if you wanted something done, you had to make nice with the one person who could do it for you. Because unlike in the big city, there was usually only one source for everything.

  Except beer, bait, and cigarettes, of course.

  That point was driven painfully home to Josie as she stood at the counter of Copies 2 Go (“We Sell Lottery Tickets!”), trying to get permission to use one of the ancient photocopiers.

  “It’s just a flyer, see?” She waved the 8-1/2-by-11 sheet she’d written, trying to make the permed-haired female clerk behind the counter understand. “I need about fifty of them.”

  “I don’t care how many you need. Unless you have a local address, you can’t use the copy machines.”

  “I do have a local address. I just don’t remember what it is. It’s that big house about a half mile outside of town. You know, the old one with the chimneys and the stonework and the gigantic yard?”

  “Have you got a utility bill?”

  “No. I’m still moving in. But—”

  “Next.” Permed Lady gestured for the customer in line behind Josie to step forward. “How’re you doing today, Trudy?”

  “Pretty good. Is that old Xerox in the corner free?”

  “Sure, it is. Just go on and—”

  “I’m sorry,” Josie murmured to the customer. “But I wasn’t finished yet.” She elbowed her way forward and held out her flyer, which advertised her new dance school. If living in Vegas had taught her anything, it was that demand could never start being generated too soon. “How about twenty-five copies? That’s all. Just a measly twenty-five. Please?”

  “Look.” The clerk frowned. “You out-of-towners come up here, putting up your posters and your new subdivision signs and whatnot all over the place, and then the city council gets all pissy with me because of the litter! I’ve had it. No copies.” She glanced sideways. “Sure, Trudy. Go right ahead and use that Xerox.”

  Josie watched, frustrated, as the other customer trundled off to the beat-up copier.

  “Is there another copy shop in town?”

  “No.” The clerk seemed to try to hide it, but a smug smile spread across her face anyway. “Looks like you’re out of luck. Maybe you’d better go on back to Las Vegas.”

  Confused, Josie angled her head. “But I never told you I was from—”

  “Oh, I remember you, Josie Day,” Permed Lady interrupted. “We all do. We know what you’ve been up to, too.” She leaned sideways and waved another customer forward. “Next!”

  Two more customers pushed to the counter, crowding Josie out of the way. Flummoxed, she edged sideways. She wasn’t sure what to do. If she didn’t get her copies, she couldn’t advertise, but….

  Several more smirks followed her. Two elderly women whispered and pointed. Suddenly, Josie didn’t care quite so much about generating dance school demand. Not today.

  Clutching her flyer, she bolted for the door. If she’d ever needed a jazzy showgirl walk to help her hold her head high, it was now. But she couldn’t quite manage it. Not when her so-called triumphant homecoming was turning out to be so much harder than she’d expected.

  It got worse.

  Strolling down the cracked sidewalk bordering Main Street, Josie wrinkled her nose at the exhaust billowing from the pickup trucks putt-putting past. She took stock of Donovan’s Corner.

  She noticed which shops were new, which were renovated, and which were the same old fabric store, convenience mart, and single-plex movie theater she’d grown up with. She breezed past the chamber of commerce. She dodged retirees out for their daily dose of fresh air. She pinpointed several good locations for putting up her (future) dance-school flyers, since—as Josie told herself firmly—there was no way that woman at Copies 2 Go was going to keep her down for long.

  Then disaster struck.

  “Josie? Is that you?”

  Spinning, she confronted the owner of that voice.

  Her sister.

  “I thought that was you!” Jenna said, eyes wide with surprise. Holding a toddler in one arm and a bulging purse in the other, she looked exactly like what she was—a small-town wife and mother of two. “What are you doing in town?”

  Awkwardly, Josie hugged her. “Just…a visit.”

  Jenna gave a disbelieving sound. “You haven’t visited Donovan’s Corner since you hotfooted it for Vegas. Come on. What’s really going on?”

  Well, I inherited a mansion. Sort of.

  No. Josie couldn’t tell her that. Not yet. Telling Jenna the truth would lead to the showgirl discussion, the saving-Tallulah discussion, and the April Fool’s Day gullibility discussion. Then, as sisters, they’d be forced to segue into the dance-school impossibility lecture, the copy-shop scandal disclosure, and the general “why don’t you grow up?” analysis.

  Josie wasn’t up for all that. Not when her elder sister—who’d always done everything right—was standing there in her nonscandalous blue jeans and oversize polo shirt, with her angelic little girl and (probably) a sensible purse full of sensible grocery coupons and a sensible shopping list. Full of healthy vegetables and prune juice.

  Nobody was telling Jenna she couldn’t use the Xerox machines. Nobody was whispering and pointing and frowning at her. Josie would be willing to bet nobody ever had.

  So what was really going on?

  Diversion. That’s what was going on.

  “Hey! Is this really little Emily? I don’t believe how big she’s gotten!” Smiling, Josie leaned toward the strawberry blond toddler. She honestly was adorable, dressed in pint-size overalls and a tiny flower-print T-shirt. “The last time I saw you,” she cooed, “you were just a baby. And your big sister was about your size.” She looked around. “Where’s Hannah, anyway?”

  Silence.

  Uh-oh. Josie glanced up, temporarily abandoning her quest to capture her niece’s flailing, chubby little hand in hers. It was just as she’d feared. Jenna stared at her as though she could see right inside her head—and knew perfectly well this whole conversation was a detour from the deadly “visiting Donovan’s Corner” discussion.

  But then she hitched Emily higher on her hip and, to Josie’s relief, answered.

  “Hannah’s in kindergarten now. I just dropped her off at school.”

  “Kindergarten? Wow! I can’t believe it.” Kindergarten was one thing Josie had fond memories of. In kindergarten, no one had expected her to settle down, stay in her seat, or pay too much attention to things like good behavior. “Time really flies. That means Hannah must be, what, five now?”

  Another silence.

  Josie could feel something building between them. Something expectant. Something she wanted to avoid.

  “Cute shoes,” she blurted. Another bid for diversion.

  Jenna wasn’t buying it. She didn’t so much as glance at her scuffed sneakers.

  “Are you going to go see Mom and Dad?” she asked.

  Yup, that was it. The thing Josie wanted to avoid.

  So much for diversion.

  “Well, I just got here. I mean, literally. This morning. I haven’t had a chance to do much.” Besides go ga-ga over my gorgeous handyman, lug half a dozen boxes into my new tumbledown mansion, and launch a dance school scheme. “So far.”

  “Mmmm-hmmm.” With practiced ease, Jenna tugged a grubby stuffed monkey from the depths of her purse. One-handed, she offered it to fussy Emily. Then she gave Josie her patented I’m older, listen to me look. “Mark my words. You might as well just get it over with. By the time the five o’clock news airs tonight, the whole town will know you’re back anyway.”

  “I seriously doubt I’ll make the news.”

  “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  Josie wished she didn’t. Adopting her most persuasive tone, she tried again. �
�You know, it would keep me out of the news if you didn’t mention that you saw me.”

  Jenna rolled her eyes. Right. Josie had been crazy to expect any kind of deviant behavior from her saintly sister. Even for solidarity’s sake.

  With a sigh that suggested longstanding tolerance, Jenna held her ground. “You’re going to have to see them sometime.”

  “Okay, fine.” Josie looked away, pretending to be absorbed in the snail’s-pace traffic down Main Street. “I’ll stop by Mom’s office.”

  “And Dad?”

  “Dad? He’s doing pretty well with that whole ‘I’ve only got one daughter’ thing.” Josie shrugged, offering up a feeble grin. “I’d hate to break his winning streak.”

  “Josie—”

  “No, don’t worry about it. I’m fine.” Feeling anything but, she looked around for an excuse to get away. “Anyway, I’ve got to run. I was just on my way…here.” She pointed.

  Jenna arched an unplucked eyebrow. “Donovan’s Corner Utilities?”

  Josie nodded. “Yup. But it was great seeing you! Say ‘hi!’ to David for me, okay?” Jenna’s husband, a plumber, was as flawless as Jenna was. “Bye! Bye, Emily!”

  The little girl squeezed her fist in an awkward learner’s version of a wave. The gesture pricked Josie right where it hurt most—her heart. She wished she’d seen Emily and Hannah more over the past few years. But with things so complicated….

  “Later,” she said, then ducked into the refuge of the town’s combined electric, gas, water, and phone company. As long as she was hiding out, she figured she’d might as well get something useful accomplished—like having the utilities at Blue Moon transferred to her own name.

  Not that going all sensible was a reaction to seeing Jenna or anything, Josie assured herself as she approached the customer service counter. Her perfect sister didn’t have a thing to do with it. She just wanted to make sure she’d have hot water later. For a shower. Or a bubble bath. Or a Cup O’ Noodles for dinner. That was all.

  Waiting in line, Josie stared at the utility company’s public service advertising. A poster about cost per kilowatt hours hung to her left. Another explaining low-flow showerheads was tacked up beside it. She tried to lose herself in the dancing water drop mascot pictured on the poster, but it was no use. The same old question kept poking at her.