by Leslie Kelly
Yet Daneen was the one everyone had thought of as the bitch for running away with Nick the night before Prom.
Not anymore, though. Because tonight, Emma was the subject of conversation. The room was nearly buzzing as the rumor floated about from person to person like a busy bee.
“Porn star,” she muttered, shaking her head in disbelief. “Ridiculous.”
For the life of her, she could not understand this whole thing. It should be clear to anybody that the woman was too stiff and proper to ever get naked in front of strangers, much less have sex in front of a whole entire camera crew. Plus, she didn’t have the body for it. Those boobs on the billboard were three times the size of Emma’s…or of any unsurgically enhanced woman’s. Nope, Emma was cute, but too normal-looking to be a man’s fantasy woman.
Except Johnny’s.
Yeah. She apparently was his. And had been for a very long time.
A part of her—the part that appreciated his many kindnesses and the support Johnny had given her and Jack over the years—wished him luck with his fantasy girl. He deserved to be happy, if any man in this lousy town did.
The more spiteful part of her wished Emma would leave Joyful as soon as this reunion was over and never come back.
Thinking about Johnny reminded her of what they’d talked about earlier in the parking lot. About how he was helping Emma by looking into the sale of the property where Joyful Interludes was being built.
Glancing at her watch, she decided to take a chance and call Jimbo. If Hannah answered, well, she had a legitimate reason for calling at this time on a Saturday night. Jimbo had asked her to keep him apprised of anything she heard relating to Emma. This definitely qualified.
Ducking out of the room into the hallway, Daneen stood in a quiet alcove and pulled her cell phone out of her purse. Fortunately, Hannah didn’t answer. “Hey, it’s me,” she said when she heard Jimbo’s voice.
“Daneen…” Jimbo sounded distracted. And his voice was slightly slurred. “Why are you calling me at home?”
“I heard something tonight I thought might interest you.” She quickly filled him in on her conversation with Johnny.
For a long moment, Jimbo stayed quiet. Then he said, “Johnny told you he’s personally looking into it?”
“Yes.”
Jimbo cleared his throat and fumbled with the phone. Daneen waited patiently, then heard him talking to someone else. Hannah. When he got back on the line, he was using his blustery, mayor-type voice. “Well, yes, thank you so much for calling to let me know, Dan.”
Oh, great, now her own father was being used as a cover for her illicit affair. God, wouldn’t that give him a heart attack if he found out? As would this whole mess.
“You’re welcome,” she said. Then she ran a weary hand over her eyes, wondering why she continued to do this to herself. She disconnected the call, suddenly feeling all her earlier happiness over the evening dissipate.
Dropping her phone into her purse, she thought about reaching for her keys and going home. She and Jack could stay up late watching a scary movie and eating popcorn. That sounded much more appealing to her than hanging out with a bunch of gossipy people who hadn’t changed a bit since high school. Or dancing yet again with Fred Willis, who’d tagged along after her all evening.
Before she could turn to leave, however, someone came storming down the hallway from the direction of the pool exit. She froze, watching Emma Jean Frasier practically march into the banquet room.
Right then, Daneen decided to stay. Because, suddenly, things looked like they were going to get interesting again.
JOHNNY HADN’T TAKEN Emma outside with the intention of telling her what people were saying about her. He’d wanted to act as a buffer—as Claire had been doing—between Em and anyone ignorant enough to confront her with the ridiculous stories. When he’d seen Claire glaring daggers at Melanie Forsythe, another woman at their table, he’d figured the time had come to step in.
He’d intended a dance. One dance to diffuse things, let people get distracted, and get Emma out of their line of fire. When she’d asked him to step outside, instead, it had seemed just as good a solution.
Going outside was supposed to be about letting her get some air. It wasn’t supposed to turn funny and playful and sexy and personal.
But it had. And for a brief time, he’d forgotten all the decisions he’d made the night before about staying out of Emma Jean’s life.
He still couldn’t believe what she’d gone through at work. Nor the laid-back, easy way she talked about it. Her personal life had fallen apart around her, yet she’d been casually joking about hit lists and birth control.
Birth control. He hadn’t liked the detour his thoughts had taken then. It’d been all he could do not to pull her into his arms and kiss the teasing laughter off her lips. To say to hell with it all, play her hero, let her take whatever comfort she needed and enjoy it for as long as he could.
Emma, however, hadn’t seemed to be in need of comfort. In fact, she’d seemed completely in control. So much so that when she’d demanded the truth, he’d had no choice but to give it to her.
All of it.
He hadn’t been sure what to expect. Horrified tears? Righteous anger? Hysterical laughter? All three?
The one thing he didn’t expect was what he got. Silence. A long, silent moment when her pretty gold eyes grew wide, her mouth fell open and she stood there staring at him.
“Are you okay?” he’d asked. “It’s silly gossip, it’ll die down.”
She hadn’t said a word. She’d just whirled around and marched back inside. After one second’s consideration, he realized exactly what she was going to do.
Oh, boy.
“Emma,” he called after her, not sure whether he should try to change her mind. Or tell her to go for it.
“What’s going on?” Daneen stepped out from a mirrored, recessed alcove, watching with him as Emma disappeared inside the banquet room.
“I told her the rumors.”
Daneen whistled. “Is she doing what I think she’s doing?”
“Uh-huh.”
“This I gotta see.”
The two of them entered the room where the reunion was still going strong. His gaze immediately scanned the crowd for Emma’s bright blond hair and her bright red dress.
The crowd had finished dinner, and the drinks had begun to flow a little heavier. Loud nineties music blared from the deejay’s speakers and a bunch of people crowded the dance floor, moving in one big, intoxicated mass.
In one corner of the room, Chuck Stubbins was posing for pictures with some of his football buddies, all of them trying to look young and tough instead of thirtyish and balding. In another, Gloria Gilmore, who’d been the class president, was operating a slide projector. Who was it that said pictures from the old days had to be dragged out of closets for these things? As was typical, the projector flashed pictures from the yearbook up onto a huge screen, just to remind everyone, in case they’d forgotten, that they were no longer those young, carefree kids.
Close by, he saw Sue Ann Tillman Todd. According to one of the pictures on the screen, she’d been named Girl Most Likely To Succeed in the class superlatives. Since she now seemed to be gleefully regaling some of her former classmates with the details of her divorce settlement, during which she’d ruined her dentist husband, he figured she’d succeeded all right.
He continued to check out the room. At the middle table, a former cheerleader—who looked like she couldn’t stand up straight unless someone stuck a pole up her ass—wobbled on top of a chair. She held two fistfuls of flowers, obviously taken from the massacred centerpiece, and was shaking them like pom-poms. Around her were a few former jocks who looked ready to catch her if she fell. Who’d catch them, he had no idea.
Then he spotted her. Right through the middle of all the madness marched Emma Jean. She beelined for the deejay, exchanged a few words with him, then gratefully accepted his microphone. “Excuse me, m
ay I have your attention?”
Johnny closed his eyes briefly, and took in a deep breath, almost feeling sorry for the Joyful class of 1995. Because they were about to get some payback.
“I’m sorry to interrupt the music,” Emma said with a big smile for the deejay, who looked ready to fall down to his knees in front of her. Johnny’d been on the receiving end of that smile, so he understood completely.
The room slowly grew quiet. Conversations died down, laughter stopped midjoke and the few people still eating put down their forks. Finally, the only sound in the room was the mechanical swish of the slide machine, still flashing black-and-white photos from ten years ago onto the wall.
How appropriate that the slide now splashed up there for all to see pictured Emma Jean Frasier…Nicest Girl.
“I just want to tell you all how thrilled I am to be back here in little old Joyful,” Emma said into the microphone, her honeyed voice holding a hint of southern accent. “Wow, my life has changed so much since I lived here, I can’t tell you how much fun it’s been to see y’all again.” Her eyes scanned the crowd. “Why, the friendliness, the sweetness, the kindness of this place was something I’d almost forgotten about in all my travels. My varied experiences.”
Johnny heard a murmur nearby, followed by a feminine giggle.
Just wait.
“Imagine my happiness in knowing the generosity of spirit, the honesty, openness and goodness I’d always remembered about Joyful, Georgia was still here.”
Beside him, Daneen let out a little snort. He cast a quick glance at her and noticed the smile playing about her lips. She knew full well what Emma was up to and was enjoying the hell out of it. One thing he had to say for his sister-in-law, she believed in equal opportunity cattiness.
“My, it seems like everyone here just loves everybody.” Emma looked over at Melanie, the woman Claire had been glaring at during dinner. “And y’all are so forgiving. I mean, Melanie, imagine you and Charlie getting married even after what you did when you went down to Florida for spring break in senior year.”
The woman blanched. Beside her, her husband’s eyes grew round. Emma didn’t even appear to notice. “And heavens, Kevin O’Leary, imagine you a town council member even though you used to cheat like crazy off of everybody else during algebra exams.”
Kevin’s face turned red and he gulped at his beer.
“Then there’s you, Jason Michaels—how wonderful that you did finally find some girl to marry you. We were all so worried since all your ex-girlfriends used to talk about your—” she lowered her voice as if whispering into the microphone “—size issue.”
A couple of men laughed. Everyone else remained silent. While beside him, Johnny heard Daneen sigh. “Oh, boy,” she whispered, “I don’t imagine I’m going to escape this?”
“Probably not,” he whispered back, glad his ex-sister-in-law seemed to be taking Emma’s tirade in stride. Unlike the rest of the class, who merely gaped in shock and confusion.
“And Courtney Zimmerman, how wonderful that you and Marie Fox were able to stay friends even after she told everyone you’d slept with fifteen guys during the summer between junior and senior year,” Emma said, smiling at a blonde in a black dress, who’d been standing beside a blonde in a blue dress. The two blondes turned on each other and started whispering fast and furious until one’s husband stepped between them to pull his wife away.
Emma’s smile slowly faded, as if she’d lost the energy to continue with the spite that was so unlike her. She looked over the crowd, shaking her head, looking disgusted with them all. “It’s not pretty, is it? Not fun. The rumors and the gossip.” Then she snorted a laugh. “The lies.”
She walked over to the deejay, and appeared to be about to hand him the microphone back. Johnny sensed a collective sigh of relief from the crowd, who would likely be back to ripping each other to shreds in a few minutes, but for now seemed cowed into silence.
But Emma wasn’t quite done. Before giving up the microphone, she turned to face the room again. “By the way, in case you’re interested in the truth, I’m a financial analyst and stockbroker. I’ve worked for a major Manhattan firm for the past five years.” She laughed softly. “I am not responsible for that monstrosity of a building being constructed on what I thought, until I arrived back in town, was my property. And believe me, if there’s anything I can do to put a stop to it, I will.”
The crowd seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the punch line they all knew was coming. Then they got it.
“I’ve never seen an X-rated film, much less been in one.”
Each person in the room giggled, coughed or whispered in reaction to her words.
Emma gave them all one last pitying look, before adding, “I’ve had sex with a total of three men in my life, one of whom is in this room, as you all know, since you saw us naked on prom night.”
Oh, shit, now every set of eyes in the room was on him.
But even as he grew uncomfortable under the stares, another part of him was ready to sing hallelujah at her admission about her rather uninspiring sex life.
“As for who I’m sleeping with now?” she continued. “Well, frankly, that’s none of your goddamn business.”
Then and only then did she hand over the microphone.
Everyone in the room remained silent, frozen, watching her as she stood defiantly alone on the dance floor, looking ready to rip the arm off anyone who dared approach her. Probably only Claire could have done it, but Emma’s friend remained near her husband, just as stunned as everyone else.
Johnny was about to go to her, to take her by the hand and escort her out of this place, whether she wanted him to or not.
Suddenly, however, the silence was broken by a sharp sound.
A clap. Then another. Everyone immediately looked toward the doorway to see who it was who dared to applaud Emma’s outrageous performance.
Johnny couldn’t see at first, until the crowd shifted. And then, one split second before he saw the man still slowly applauding Emma Jean, he heard Daneen gasp in shock.
Somehow, he knew by that one little sound, and by the sense of inevitability flowing through him, who he was going to see.
And he was right.
It was his brother Nick.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ON SUNDAY, while Claire went to church and then to a family gathering at her mother’s house, Emma scoured the kitchen for Grandma Emmajean’s recipes. She finally found them inside an old, empty box of rock salt that she remembered her grandfather using to make ice cream during long-ago summer visits.
On Monday, after Claire went off to work at her new job, Emma went to the grocery store to buy some ingredients.
Because she was going to bake a pie. She had to keep busy. Had to bake and clean and do laundry and help Claire with Eve and think about absolutely anything else but what she’d done Saturday night at the reunion.
She still couldn’t believe it. Not the things she’d said—which, to be honest, had only been the truth—but that she’d said them at all.
It had been petty and childish. If she hadn’t had a few drinks, and hadn’t been so completely enraged by what Johnny had told her, she would never have done such a thing.
Porn star. Good grief, the entire time she’d been back in Joyful, wondering why people were acting so strangely, everyone had been talking about her wicked life as a porn star. No wonder nobody’d shown up on her doorstep with blueberry muffins. She was lucky they hadn’t shown up with sex toys.
She still hadn’t entirely forgiven Claire for not telling her the truth about the rumors. Her friend had apologized, and had sworn she thought the silly stories would die on their own.
Now they wouldn’t die, they’d merely change. Emma wasn’t a porn star, she was the tornado who’d probably managed to ruin a few marriages and destroy a few friendships Saturday night.
“I should’ve gone to Florida,” she whispered as she stood in the kitchen, reading Emmajean’s recipe for
a perfect, flaky pie crust early Monday morning.
Saturday night had been shocking in a number of ways. Not just the rumors, or how she’d handled them, but also Nick’s arrival. She’d certainly been surprised to see her old boyfriend at the reunion—but not nearly as surprised as everyone else had seemed.
Especially Johnny and Daneen. They’d looked stunned, both silently staring at Nick, who, Emma had to admit, had grown into as handsome a man as his brother.
Maybe it hadn’t been such a big deal to Emma because she hadn’t seen any of these people for ten years, Nick included. For Johnny, however, Nick’s arrival appeared momentous.
Emma had watched the two brothers approach each other and exchange a few words. She hadn’t seen much else, because Claire had soon appeared by her side, offering to drive home. Handing over her keys, Emma had immediately followed Claire out, not giving the rest of her classmates another thought.
They, however, had apparently been giving her some. Because, as bizarre as it seemed, she’d had several phone calls throughout the day Sunday, and already this morning. Nice calls. Apologetic calls. From people she’d considered friends, and those she’d hardly known.
It seemed her tirade had done some good, at least. It’d made the class of ’95 take a collective look at itself, at the gossiping and malicious rumors that’d been such a part of high school life…and remained part of their lives today. Some, it appeared, didn’t like what they saw in the mirror Emma had held up before them. So far, she had three lunch invitations as well as an offer to come speak to the local ladies’ group about stock market investing.
Only in Joyful could she go from pariah to social butterfly with one public meltdown.
Removing the large package of pecans from the grocery store bag, Emma began to sort them out into piles for individual pies. One for her, Claire and Eve. One for Claire’s mom. And one for the woman who owned the hair salon. She might have been joking about Emma bringing her a pie if she wanted a job, but Emma was very serious. It was time to get on with her life, and short-term employment was step one.
