by Merry Farmer
He kissed her, then kissed her some more, and before she knew it, she was on her back again, being loved all over. It was sweet, sweet proof that at least someone found her desirable and worthy. As every good sensation swirled through her body, she promised herself that she would do everything in her power to be the woman Hero saw when he looked at her.
An hour later, they were up and showered and on their way home.
“Of course, I have a house waiting for me, for us, in Haskell,” Hero said as they pulled into the driveway of Denise’s house. His parents’ shiny, white sedan was parked in the space where Denise’s car—still in the shop—usually parked. “But we don’t have to rush to move out there.”
“What about your job?” Denise asked. “Doesn’t that start next week?”
“It does.” He nodded, cutting the engine and getting out to dash around and hold the door open for her. “But Haskell isn’t so far away that I can’t commute until we figure everything out.”
Denise smiled at him with gratitude from the bottom of her heart, then threw her arms around him. She hugged him tight and kissed him for good measure. “You make me feel like the luckiest girl in the world.”
“And you make me feel like more than just a pencil-pushing desk-monkey, so thanks.”
They shared a laugh and another hug and kiss, then headed inside.
Their warm, fuzzy bubble popped as soon as they were through the door.
“Where have you been?” Destiny barked, jumping up from the couch.
Denise’s mom answered before she could. “Now, now, Destiny. Everyone deserves a nice, leisurely wedding night.”
Denise was sure her mom didn’t mean to imply anything—even though she smiled knowingly at her and Hero—but Destiny reacted as if she’d spelled everything out in detail. “That’s so gross. You’re my mom, you’re not supposed to act like that.”
“I—” Denise had no idea what to say, no idea how to defend herself or if she even needed defending. What made it all worse was that Hero’s parents were sitting on the sofa, coffee mugs in hand, looking embarrassed. “Good morning, everybody,” she said at last, feeling totally lame.
Hero handled it much better. “Mom, Dad.” He smiled as he crossed to the sofa and kissed his mom’s cheek, then shook his dad’s hand. “New Mom.” He continued over to Denise’s mom with a smile, kissing her cheek as well. “And last but definitely not least, good morning, new kind of daughter of mine.”
He moved to give Destiny a hug, but Destiny flinched and pulled away.
“Eew. You are not my dad. Stay away from me.”
Hero’s smile dropped to something halfway between defeat and concern. Denise remembered him saying he’d talked to her before the wedding, but it looked like whatever he’d said hadn’t stuck.
Destiny wasn’t done yet. “My real dad was here before you were this morning. He took me out to breakfast with Mona. He said that when I go live with him, my room will be twice the size of my room here, and I can put up all the posters I want on the wall.”
Despair hit Denise right in the stomach. Her no poster rule was more about preserving the ancient wallpaper in Destiny’s room, but of course Destiny saw it as another way she was being repressed. Wes had used yet another weapon against her, and she felt even more powerless to do anything about it.
“Did you have a good time at breakfast?” Hero asked with seemingly perfect calm.
Denise balked. Whose side was he on?
Destiny seemed just as taken aback. “Yes,” she snapped, but the fire behind her words wasn’t as hot. “I…I had pancakes.”
“Cool.” Hero smiled. “You should taste the pancakes my mom makes.” He nodded to his mom, who sat, stiff and silent on the sofa, along with his dad. The two of them looked like they were watching a movie that they hadn’t checked out the reviews for before they bought tickets. “You’ll make them before you head home, won’t you, Ma?”
“Oh, yes, of course,” his mom answered quickly. She turned to Denise, “I hope you don’t mind, but your mother convinced us to stay one more night to get to know the new family.”
Denise glanced from Hero’s mom to her own. A strange, squiggly feeling bounced around her chest. New family. For as long as she could remember, it had just been her and her mom and Destiny. The three of them had stood together in a lot of bad times. She’d never considered that by marrying Hero she’d be getting a whole new family.
“I don’t mind at all.” She smiled, in spite of the awkwardness of the situation, in spite of Destiny being a total teenager, and in spite of the crazy that enveloped her life. “I have to get to work soon, though.”
“Denise is Culpepper’s best hairdresser,” her mom bragged.
“Oh?” Hero’s mom sat straighter, patting her shoulder-length hair. “I’ve been meaning to get a trim. Could you fit me in this morning?”
Whether Hero’s mom knew it or not, she’d just paid Denise the best compliment she could possibly get. “Yes!” she gasped. “I mean, I would love to cut your hair, Mrs. Yamaguchi.”
Hero’s mom laughed—so much like her son—and stood. “Call me, Ethel, dear.”
“Ethel?” Denise blinked. She didn’t want to be rude and say it out loud, but that wasn’t a name she expected Hero’s mom to have.
“My mother was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan,” she explained anyhow, winking and patting Denise’s arm.
“Oh.” There was so much that Denise didn’t know about her new family, but she suddenly felt like she had to find out everything. The world was opening up to her.
“Do you need a ride to your salon?” Ethel asked.
“No, it’s just down the street,” Denise answered. “I always walk.”
“Then let’s go.”
Denise felt strange about leaving Hero with her mom and Destiny in a snit, but she really did have to get to work. At least he’d have his dad there to back him up if Destiny got overwhelming. But before Denise and Ethel had reached the door, Destiny had flopped to the floor in the corner to play with the new video game console Wes had gotten her. Her temper had simmered down to frowning and moping. That was the best Denise could hope for.
“My daughter, Hero’s sister, Sue, was like that when she was a teenager,” Ethel explained.
“Hero told me a little bit about her,” Denise wasn’t used to making conversation with anyone who wasn’t sitting in her salon chair, but since she was trying to turn over a new leaf, she put all her effort into being a good companion. “She’s a chef now, isn’t she?”
“She is.” Ethel nodded. “And a very good one. But she drove us all to tears on a regular basis when she was Destiny’s age. So don’t think that you’re a failure as a mother because you’ve got a hormonally-charged teenager at home.”
A lump formed in Denise’s throat. Had Ethel been talking to Hero, to her mom? Or was she that obvious. “There’s so much I haven’t been able to give her,” she lamented. They’d reached the corner of the road and had to wait for the light to turn before they could cross. Culpepper was experiencing more traffic than usual, what with Homecoming and everyone’s reunions starting the next day.
Ethel hummed, looking and sounding like a sage. “I met her father, Wes.”
Denise’s spirits sank even further. “He wants to take Destiny away.”
The light turned green, and they headed across the street. Ethel shook her head. “He might say that, but I saw his wife. I saw the way she looked at Destiny. She doesn’t want her husband’s fifteen-year-old daughter pulling attention away from her sugar daddy.”
“What?” Denise nearly tripped on the curb as they finished crossing. “I thought they both wanted Destiny because it would look good for that city council election Wes is in.”
“Maybe.” Ethel shrugged, once again looking like her son. “But I have eyes, and I also have experience.”
They continued down to the salon. Tammy had opened that day, so all Denise had to do was walk through the front door and go put
on her smock. She showed Ethel to her chair right away, and after a quick check-in and set-up, she brought Ethel back to shampoo her hair.
“I’m still so terrified that Wes actually will take Destiny away,” she confided in a quiet voice once she had Ethel back in her chair. “I mean, it’s great and all that I get to start a new life with Hero, and we might even have more kids.” She gasped as the thought struck her. More kids? With Hero? That would be amazing.
“But you love your daughter and you want what’s best for her,” Ethel finished her sentence, a sparkle in her eyes that said she wouldn’t mind a few grandchildren.
Denise pulled herself together and said, “Exactly. And I don’t think Wes and all the stuff he’s promised her are really what’s best.”
“No.”
Ethel didn’t have a chance to say more. The salon door opened, the bell tinkling, and the very last people Denise ever wanted to see again marched through in a pack, just like high school.
“Denise!” her old friend and fellow popular cheerleader, Candice, squealed at the sight of her.
“Oh my gosh, is that really Denise?” their other friend, Tiffany, gasped.
“She’s gotten so fat,” the third of what had once been their group of four, Jolene, blurted. She then put a hand over her mouth and said, “Oops,” with all the genuineness of the implants that gave curves to her formerly flat figure.
Denise swallowed, feeling her face heat. Her stomach churned with dread, but she forced herself to smile. “Hi guys,” she said with false cheer. One glance at Ethel in the mirror was all it took for her mother-in-law to understand exactly what was going on.
“She’s not fat,” Tiffany said, sidling to her with a pitying bat of her eyelashes. “She’s shapely.”
“Right.” Candice dragged out the single syllable, making it sound condescending. “Big is beautiful, after all.”
“It’s probably because she had a kid,” Jolene added. “How old is Destiny now?”
“Fifteen,” Denise answered through clenched jaw.
“Oh right.” Once again, Candice drew out ‘right’ until it sounded like an insult. “It is our fifteenth class reunion, after all.”
“Are you allowed to come?” Tiffany asked. “I mean, you were pregnant at graduation.”
“I still graduated,” Denise reminded them.
“They didn’t kick you out for being a skanky ho who got herself knocked up behind the bleachers?” Jolene delivered the killing blow.
Her three old friends laughed, the sound sour and unkind. Denise’s face was pink enough to match her hair. She couldn’t even look at Ethel in the mirror now. She cleared her throat and asked her old friends, “Ladies, do you want something?”
“We wanted to see you,” Tiffany crooned. “It’s been so long.”
“And no one from our class has invited you to any of the pre-reunion parties,” Jolene said, then repeated her whole routine of covering her mouth and saying, “Oops,” but in a higher tone this time.
She shouldn’t have, but Denise felt horrible. Like she had at the end of her senior year when everyone had turned their backs on her the first time.
“It’s okay.” Candice slid closer to her and patted her shoulder—but with her fingertips only—pretending to be sympathetic. “You’ll be at the dance tomorrow night, right?”
Every year at Homecoming, since Culpepper was such a small town, each class that was having a reunion attended the high school dance after the big football game along with the entire high school. School administrators tried to sell it as a community event, but Denise had always seen it as a way to hold on to those horrible high school years, never letting them go. She had gone to her ten-year reunion dance, had a horrible time, and left early. This year, however, when their former class president, Tabby Ross, one of Culpepper’s few doctors, had invited her to help on the decorations crew, she’d said yes. It was all part of her effort to turn over a new leaf.
Seeing her three former friends now made her wish she’d left that particular leaf unturned.
“Yes,” she answered, trying to focus on combing through Ethel’s hair in preparation to cut it. “I’ll be there.”
“Good,” Candice cooed.
“I hope it won’t be too awkward, what with Wes’s new wife,” Tiffany said.
“She’s so nice, and so skinny,” Jolene added.
“And Wes is so happy about taking custody of his daughter.” Tiffany grinned.
Every fiber of Denise’s body ached with misery. “Nothing has been decided yet. He hasn’t even hired a lawyer or brought it to court.”
“Yes, but you have to admit, Denise, honey,” Candice patted her arm with mock sympathy again. “You’re kind of a terrible person.”
“Yeah, what court in their right mind would grant custody of a pretty girl like Destiny to a nasty, poor chick like you?” Jolene asked.
“Ladies,” Tammy raised her voice from the front desk. “If you’re not going to get a haircut or style, then you need to move along.”
Denise had never been so grateful for her co-worker in her life. She sent Tammy a watery smile. They hadn’t gotten along for the years that they’d worked together…up until things had changed that summer and Denise had put effort into making amends. The fact that Tammy would defend her now meant that all of those efforts had worked. It was the silver lining in the situation.
“We’re sorry,” Candice sniffed, leading her gaggle of bitchy girls back to the front of the salon. “We were just trying to visit with an old friend.”
“Yeah,” Jolene added, her nose in the air. “Who died and made you boss?”
“My mom,” Tammy answered, deadpan.
The three amigos looked shocked and guilty and apologized before leaving the salon as fast as they could.
Denise turned to Tammy with a confused frown. “Your mom’s still alive and living in Jackson Hole, and you didn’t inherit the salon anyhow.”
Tammy snorted. “They don’t know that.”
It was a simple moment, but it was beautiful nonetheless. Fifteen years ago, it had been the end of Denise’s world when Candice, Tiffany, and Jolene had turned their backs on her, but they had also just inadvertently proven to her that she did have friends.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized to Ethel anyhow. “That was…embarrassing.”
“More for them than for you,” Ethel replied.
Denise sighed and shook her head. She went to work trimming Ethel’s hair. “The truth is, I haven’t always been the nicest person. I could have turned out just like them. We were all cheerleaders together in high school. I was as mean as they are.”
Even though her head was tilted down as Denise trimmed, Ethel said, “But you aren’t like that now.”
It took Denise a few, long seconds of soul-searching before she could bring herself to say, “No. No I’m not.”
“She’s not,” Tammy seconded, walking one of her regular little old ladies over to the shampoo sinks. “Not anymore.”
Denise sent her another grateful smile. “But you should know that I was,” she told Ethel. “And I’m sorry for it. Your son is perfect, you know, and he deserves a woman who is much better than me.”
Ethel chuckled. “Hero is not as perfect as you think. He’s too picky about food, he’s too much of a neat freak, and if he starts concentrating on a project, you won’t be able to get his attention for all the tea in China.”
“Really?” She still thought her new husband was pretty fabulous, but it was oddly comforting to know that he had faults too.
“And don’t ever try to wake him up early on the weekends,” Ethel went on. “He can be very helpful when his heart is in it, but just like his father, if you want him to do something and he’s not in the mood, it’s like trying to teach an elephant to crochet.”
Denise laughed at the metaphor. She liked her new mother-in-law. She even thought that Ethel would be as accepting of her faults as her own mother was. It would be nice to have more back-
up in life.
But that was only a temporary comfort in the face of much bigger, much more immediate problems. The class reunion was tomorrow. Candice, Tiffany, and Jolene had hinted that there were things going on behind her back that would make life difficult for her. And Wes was still intent on taking Destiny away.
7
The advantage of being an optimist was that even goodbyes weren’t so hard for Hero.
“Bye Ma.” He hugged his mom as she stood by the passenger door of his parent’s car, ready to head home. “Great haircut, by the way,” he added with a wink.
His mom patted her stylish new bob. “Denise is very good at what she does.” Her pleased smile quickly dropped. “She needs a lot of support, son. She’s a wonderful woman, but it seems like others around here don’t recognize that.”
Hero hummed and nodded. He’d listened to his mom’s frustrating account of Denise’s old high school friends giving her a hard time at the salon the previous day. He’d wanted to do something about it, find those catty women and confront them, but Denise had asked him to let it go. He would give her whatever she wanted, but he wasn’t happy about it.
“I promised to keep her safe and happy, Ma, and I intend to do that.” He kissed his mother’s cheek, then helped her into the car.
When that was done, he walked around to say goodbye to his father.
“You’ve got a lot of responsibility now, son,” his father said. “But you’ve always been good at handling responsibility.”
“Thanks, Dad.” He shook his dad’s hand, then changed his mind and went for a full-on hug. “And thanks for coming out to the wedding on such short notice.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” His dad smiled. It was like looking in a mirror. “I’m just sorry your lovely wife couldn’t be here to say goodbye to us.”
“She’s over at the school gym, decorating for the big dance tonight.” He laughed at the statement. “I think I like all this small-town stuff. It makes me feel like I’m part of a real community.”
