Broommates: Two Witches are Better Than One! (Kentucky Witches Book 2)

by Rebecca Patrick-Howard

  “Dang, Colt,” she said, shaking her head. “I am getting boring.” That’s what small town life had done to her. She might not have had much of a life when she was married to Mode, most of her time was spent trying to keep him happy, but at least there had been the occasional museum, musical, and sushi night. (Never all at the same time.)

  “I like routine, I like boring,” he said, running his rough hand over her knuckles. “You’re all the excitement I can handle.”

  Liza rolled her eyes and squeezed his fingers. “True. For this to be such a small place there always seems to be one crisis or another.”

  When Gwen brought their sandwiches (Colt’s Country Boy Burger was stacked so high he had to split it into two sections to get it in his mouth), she hung around at their table.

  “Hey, I hate to ask,” she began in that manner people use when they don’t really “hate to ask” but just want to play coy, “but I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

  She directed this not at Colt, but at Liza Jane.

  “Yeah?” Liza asked, eyeing her sandwich. Would it be rude to start eating when someone else was engaging you in conversation? In the end, her good manners won out.

  “You know that big rain storm we got last week? The one they had to call school off for ‘cause it flooded Trotting ‘holler?”

  Liza nodded that yes, she remembered. Gwen still had not set her plate down. She wondered if Gwen was holding it hostage until she agreed to whatever she was going to ask of her. Boring or not, Liza was hungry.

  “Well, it got into my basement. Ruined just about everything down there, especially the Christmas decorations. And you know how I like to decorate. I might even have to buy me a new baby Jesus inflatable. I can’t have Frosty and Santa out in my yard without something representing the real reason for Christmas. It wouldn’t be Christian and people would talk.”

  Liza nodded her agreement, trying to encourage Gwen along.

  “Anyway. Still drying out clothes and stuff. My backyard looks like the sales bin at an outlet store in Pigeon Forge.”

  Liza smiled. The redheaded woman before her wasn’t very big, maybe 5’2”, and rail thin. When she got to talking, however, she seemed to grow right before your eyes. Liza thought it was her animated hand movements and the accelerated rate of speech she used–the longer she talked to you, the faster and louder she got. She liked Gwen, though. Gwen was friendly and vibrant, called her “honey”, and made her pancakes, even when it was past breakfast time and they were off the menu.

  “Well, honey, I want you to know that I filed my claim with the insurance company and they said they might not even cover it. Can you believe the nerve of them?” Gwen demanded. “I’ve been paying them every year. What’s my money going for it I can’t use the danged policy?”

  Liza watched her sandwich slip precariously to the edge of the plate. She sent out a shot of wind to slide it back, all while murmuring her sympathies. That’s right, insurance companies stink, yadda yadda, please give me my sandwich, she cried inwardly.

  “So I was hoping maybe you could do one of your little charms, nothin’ fancy of course, to try and help me get them to pay my claim,” Gwen said in a stage whisper as she leaned in close enough to where Liza could see the faint flecks of blue in her otherwise brown eyes.

  “Um, sure,” Liza agreed. “I could do something that will hopefully make them look at the claim in your favor.”

  “That a girl!” Gwen exclaimed proudly, straightening and preening as though Liza had passed an extra-hard test. “I told Bert, that’s my husband, that you could do it! Thank you!”

  With that, she turned and marched back to the counter, a new lilt in her step.

  Liza gazed down at the table, painted black and slathered in polyurethane to make it shiny, and sighed.

  “What’s wrong?” Colt asked, trying to talk through a mouth full of burger. “You not want to do it or something?”

  “No,” Liza said mournfully. “She ran off with my sandwich.”

  * * *

  LIZA WAS EXHAUSTED from her long day. The thought of going home, kicking off her shoes, wrapping up in a blanket, and vegging out in front of the television had never sounded better.

  She could hear the music before she even climbed out of her truck. The thumping bass had the rocking chairs on her front porch moving back and forth. When Liza let herself inside, her dreams of collapsing and turning herself off fell to the ground like shards of glass.

  The house was a mess.

  Lacy, frilly, swatches of colorful fabric hung from every available surface: on the backs of chairs, on the buffet’s knobs, on the hat rack…Under normal circumstances she would’ve called the foreign objects “underwear” but they didn’t look like any she’d ever worn–these were nothing more than a miniscule strip of fabric and three tiny strings.

  On the television several women dressed like Las Vegas hookers were lined up in front of an aging man with ratty hair and ripped jeans. She thought he might have been a rock god in the 1980’s; now he looked like he’d been run over by a truck and hung out to dry. Several of the women were teared up. The television’s volume was competing with the incredibly loud rap song blaring from Liza’s CD player. She couldn’t understand a lot of the lyrics but the word “ho” seemed to come up a lot.

  Dirty dishes lined the coffee table and end tables. Ice cream had melted and dried in Liza’s favorite bowl. A half-eaten bowl of cereal was congealing in another. Several Coke cans and dirty glasses rested on the floor. The area rug was littered with cookie and cracker crumbs.

  She could smell cigarette smoke and, indeed, an antique tea cup from her Nana Bud’s wedding set held several inches of gray ashes.

  Liza fell back against the door and closed her eyes. She was going to kill her sister.

  * * *

  “I’M SORRY LADIES,” Twila began loudly, thumping the table. “And Juno.” This she added as an afterthought.

  People were always forgetting Juno, the eighty-six-year old former railroad worker who showed up to every meeting in town, whether it concerned him or not. (He attended both the Alcoholics Anonymous and Mothers of Drunk Drivers meetings, even though he was neither.)

  Juno was average in height and build, but sported a robust solid-white beard and red overalls, both of which he wore year round, and asked everyone to call him “Santa.” Somewhere along the way he’d even learned to incorporate “ho, ho, ho” into his laugh.

  The dozen or so attendees were chattering, their noise filling the armory’s meeting room with a dull roar. Liza tried to slide in through the back door, Bryar Rose in tow, and sit inconspicuously behind everyone else.

  “Do I have to go to your meeting with you?” Bryar had whined.

  “If you want dinner you do,” Liza had told her. “Meeting was meant to be this morning but they changed it to six. We’ll go, stay half an hour, and then grab something to eat. Unless you want to be stuck eating Hot Pockets and frozen pizza tonight we have to go into town.”

  “I can’t gain any weight,” Bryar warned her, not feigning the horror in her voice.

  Liza studied Bryar’s willowy, size 2 figure and rolled her eyes. She, herself, had gained a good ten pounds since her arrival in Kudzu Valley. She probably needed to lay off the fried frog legs and sweet potato pie.

  Bryar plopped down in the fold-out chair and pushed the dark sunglasses up her nose. They covered half her face. For this outing into Kudzu Valley she’d slipped on a deep green form-fitting dress, four-inch black heels, and a Coach bag that cost more than Liza Jane’s rent back in Massachusetts. Beside her, Liza felt grubby in her jeans and Gettin’ Lucky in Kentucky sweatshirt.

  When the chattering subsided, Twila tried speaking again. The grandmotherly woman was so thin you could see her bones protruding in some places, and the wisp of solid-white hair on her head did little to hide the liver spots that dotted her scalp. She barely stood at 5-feet-tall.

  When she spoke, however, her voi
ce was strong and authoritative. Someone said she used to be a schoolteacher. Liza thought she sounded more like a drill sergeant.

  “Okay ladies, and, er, Juno,” she barked. “I’m sorry for interrupting your suppertime. We need to discuss the festival. It’s in one month and now’s the crunch time.”

  Everyone nodded their heads in agreement.

  “Unfortunately, I have some bad news.” She said this not with sadness but with a touch of bitterness. “Toffee’s had to back out. Family obligations.”

  Toffee was Taffy’s twin sister. They were not identical. In fact, they didn’t even look related. Liza often wondered if there had been a screw up at the hospital. Where one was round, the other was skinny. Where one was pale, the other was dark. Where one was friendly and chatty, the other was sullen and walked around with a chip on her shoulder.

  The murmuring started up again, as the women exchanged knowing glances and whispered to their neighbor. Juno sat in the corner of the room, hands folded on his knees, and surveyed the scene before him. Liza wasn’t sure why he came to these things–he never volunteered, never participated, and rarely spoke.

  Twila banged on the table again to get everyone’s attention. “They have a relative up in Ohio who got hurt and she’s gone to, er, take care of her.”

  You could actually hear the eyes rolling of the people in the room.

  “What?” Bryar hissed. “What am I missing?”

  “That ‘relative’,” Liza whispered back, “is Toffee’s daughter, Amerlyn. She’s in prison for running OxyContin up from Florida. Again.”

  “Ah.”

  “I’m sure you all know what this means,” Twila declared, pausing for dramatic effect. “We don’t have anyone to oversee our vendors.”

  The commotion that erupted at her words had Liza closing her eyes and rubbing at her temples. She was starting to get a headache.

  Of course, it took Twila another five minutes to get everyone under control again.

  “I have given it great consideration and thought and I vote that we elect Liza Jane Higginbotham to take over Toffee’s former duties as Vendor Chair.”

  “Those in favor?”

  A room full of “ayes” rang out.

  “Opposed?”

  Silence.

  “That settles it. Liza Jane, you’re in charge.”

  A chorus of approval exploded as Liza straightened and looked around the room. “Huh? What?”

  For a second she’d been lost in thought, trying to remember if she’d set the alarm at The Healing Hands.

  “What’d I do?”

  “They just elected you chair of something or other,” Bryar said helpfully, patting her on the back.

  * * *

  “I CAN’T CHAIR a committee,” Liza moaned. “I have zero time for that and don’t have a clue as to what I am meant to be doing.”

  Bryar stabbed at a piece of lettuce from her Cobb salad, the only healthy thing on The Tasty Bite’s “healthy eatin’” section and grimaced. “I’m just glad it wasn’t me.”

  Liza took a long, deep drink of her water then exhaled loudly. “I’ll just have to tell them I can’t.”

  “There shouldn’t be that much work, right?” Bryar asked. “I mean, the festival’s in a month. You’ve already got the vendors all lined up, right? And they’ve paid. So what? You make up some welcome bags, show people where to set up on the day of the festival, and then ride around in a little golf cart or something to make sure they’re all happy.”

  Yeah, it sounded simple enough when you put it like that, but Liza knew things were never that simple.

  Bryar took another bite then grimaced. “This is not low-fat dressing. I asked for low fat. I also asked for cottage cheese on the side. They brought me fries.”

  “Sorry about that,” Liza replied. She took another sip from her water and grimaced. She was missing her colas.

  “I don’t see how you can drink that,” Bryar said, wrinkling her nose.

  “You drink water all the time,” Liza pointed out. “And aren’t you meant to be the health nut?”

  “It’s not the water itself I don’t get, it’s the drinking it straight from the tap. Buy some of that stuff bottled,” Bryar said.

  “I can’t afford luxuries like designer water,” Liza replied.

  Bryar rolled her eyes then looked around the room. She sighed noisily, loudly enough for the people sitting at a table close to them to hear.

  “And not only is this not non-fat,” Bryar began, “we’re sitting here at the counter and not once has the waitress come over to check to see if we need anything. I mean, we’re literally a foot from where they have to stand to pour the drinks and nobody has come over to us.”

  “Uh huh,” Liza said, tuning her sister out for the most part.

  “And look at this,” Bryar pointed down to the ring of condensation her glass of Diet Coke left on the counter. “Where’s the cocktail napkin you’re meant to put drinks on? These people have no idea of what service means.”

  “It’s a diner, Bryar Rose,” Liza said warily. “Both of our meals are going to cost less than $10. Just let it go.”

  “Um, waitress!” Bryar called out, definitely not letting it go. “Waitress!”

  Liza cringed when Gwen looked up and saw Bryar waving her over. Please don’t embarrass me, Liza prayed forcefully.

  “Yes?” The pleasant smile on Gwen’s face was a direct contrast to the onslaught that befell her.

  “I asked for low-fat and this is not low-fat dressing,” Bryar lectured. “And I’ve been sitting here waiting for a refill and…”

  Liza buried her head in her hands and tuned out the rest, wishing for a piece of duct tape to magically appear over her sister’s mouth.

  By the time Bryar was finished, Gwen’s face had fallen and Liza could feel her own face hot and red. As Gwen walked away Liza mouthed “I’m sorry” to her. She nodded then ducked behind the wall that separated the restaurant from the storage room.

  “Was that really necessary?” Liza demanded, as soon as Gwen was out of earshot. “First of all, her name is Gwen, not ‘waitress.’ Secondly, that was incredibly rude. You could have at least been polite about it if you couldn’t suck it up.”

  “But these people–”

  “’These people’ are your people, Bryar, whether you like it or not,” Liza seethed. “You’re from here, too, remember? You piss someone off, you’re likely pissing off one of your own cousins. And no, you’re not going to get 5-star service here because this is a diner. A diner in the middle of the mountains. So if your damn drink doesn’t have a cocktail napkin under it, deal with the wet circle like everyone else does and wipe it away.”

  Angry and mortified at her sister’s lack of manners, Liza left Gwen a $10 tip for their $9 dinner.

  Chapter Seven

  Embarrassed and disappointed (both with her sister and at her own lack of reaction), after returning Bryar to the farm house, Liza drove back into town and sneaked into her own building.

  She was trying to remind herself that she loved her sister, that she could just sometimes be an acquired taste. She tried to remind herself that, at home, Bryar had people in to cook and clean for her. That’s why she wasn’t picking up after herself. Why she heated up leftover takeout and then left the remains to harden on the plate rather than scrape it out and rinse the dish. And that she had more money than Liza, which explained why she would use up Liza’s conditioner and Bath & Body Works lotion and not replace them–the value of things didn’t cross her mind.

  Liza was trying to remind herself of a lot of things when she entered The Healing Hands.

  She loved her business. Her mother, sister, and ex-husband had all thought she was crazy for moving to Kentucky–even crazier for starting a business in a town that was withering on the vine. (No interstate access, no Mountain Parkway access, no shopping, no nightlife, no culture, and no alcohol.) She had her license to practice massage therapy, and her own (self and grandmother taught) s
kills in traditional mountain herbal lore, but she’d had zero experience in running an actual business outside of selling the occasional dress on eBay.

  “Most businesses close within the first year,” her mother had warned her. “What are you going to do when your inheritance and settlement dries up? You know we don’t have an extra room, not since I started scrapbooking and turned my guestroom into my craft center.”

  Her money drying up had been a concern, for sure, but she’d had to do something. The idea of sitting on her butt back in Massachusetts, watching Mode parade around with his trombone-playing girlfriend (now wife), and listening to her mother’s constant litany of complaints and bellyaching (Liza’s stepfather was a saint), made her want to stick her head in the oven. (Except it was electric and would have only burnt her face.)

  Her grandparents’ farm house was empty, she had a little money to spare, and she wanted to do something for herself.

  And she’d always liked Morel County.

  Liza Jane, with her love of strappy high heels and frilly, feminine dresses and the opera had never been a country girl. There might have been a time when she fished with her father, felt her bare feet drowning in the sticky mud by the creek, and sucked on the little honeysuckle blossoms that grew along their fence, but she couldn’t remember any of that. Their infrequent, and short, trips to Kentucky to visit her grandparents had provided her only frame of reference to the bucolic life.

  Back in Massachusetts they’d lived in a subdivision with a postage stamp backyard. The closest their mother let them get to nature was when she’d take them to Boston in the summer and let them splash around in the Frog Pond.

  Kudzu Valley, however, had called to her. Even now, as she looked out her bedroom window every morning and saw the gently rolling mountains, now green and lush, spreading out before her on the horizon she wanted to go up on her roof, take a flying leap, and run towards them–hopping over each peak like a giant, barely letting her toes touch the tops of the trees. She wanted to run through the fields of dandelions like a child, disrupting the little white tufts so that they floated up into the air behind her, leaving a trail of wispy little clouds.