by Becki Willis
“They did seem a little too perky to be real.”
“I heard she’s had plastic surgery so many times she hardly looks a thing like she did when they married ten years ago.”
“Wouldn’t all that be expensive? Ronny didn’t seem to be exactly rolling in money,” she said, thinking of his tattered clothes and hair that needed trimming.
“Oh, please, did you see the house they live in? And the vehicles they drive? The man owns six chicken houses. Do you have any idea how much money those things rake in each year?”
“Not really,” Madison admitted. “The way he negotiated down my contract price, I got the impression he was barely scraping by.”
“He was going deep-sea fishing for a week. That had to cost a small fortune in itself.”
Madison frowned. “I guess I was so excited to make the deal, I never thought about that.”
“I doubt you have to honor the contract, you know. If Ramona’s name wasn’t on the dotted line, she really can’t hold you to it.”
“I know. And as much as I dread the thought of having to go back —dead body or no dead body— the fact is, I need the money.”
Genesis shook her head in sad wonder. “I still can’t believe Gray left you penniless.” They had been over the same road a hundred times, but the destination was always the same.
“I know.” Madison’s sigh was glum. “But he did, and I need what little money this job will bring in. I was originally hoping it would also bring in more business, but I don’t think I’m cut out to be a chicken farmer, even for a week or less.” She crinkled her nose derisively.
“If I hadn’t already spent most of my inheritance, you know I’d give it to you.” Genny’s blue eyes were soft and earnest.
“In a heartbeat. But I can’t think of a better way for you to have invested your money, than in your very own café. You’re a natural, Genny girl.” Madison’s smile was proud as she beamed at her friend.
“You can still come to work for me full-time. The offer stands.”
“You’re the best friend a gal could ever have, and I do appreciate the offer. But friendship and business just don’t mix, and we’ve been friends for too long to mess things up between us now. You go live your dream, and I’ll live mine.”
“That’s the thing, Maddy. I’ve always dreamed of owning my own bakery and I’m finally getting to live out my fantasy. But I know running a temp agency has never been your life-long goal. It doesn’t seem fair that I get to have so much fun, and you have to work in chicken houses, of all places.” She crinkled her nose as she mentioned the smelly profession.
“Like I’m always telling the kids, life is not always fair. And to be honest, I don’t know what my dream job is. Maybe working at a variety of professions will point me in the right direction.”
Genesis’s eyes danced with amusement as she sat up straighter in her chair. “Oh, do tell!” she gushed dramatically. “So far you’ve been a chauffeur, a gofer, a dog-walker, and now a chicken farmer. Which of these glamorous professions do you prefer?” She batted her eyes with feigned fascination.
Madison laughed at her friend’s antics, exactly as intended. Genny was good for her soul, no doubt about it. They had been best friends since the summer of eighth grade, when Madison moved to Juliet to live with her grandmother. Through college, numerous moves and marriage, they were still inseparable twenty-five years later.
“Actually, being a personal shopper might be fun,” Madison mused. “I like spending other people’s money.”
“Yes, but I always envisioned it as being a bit more glitzy. I thought when you were a personal shopper you got to buy things like fur coats and plush furnishings and Oriental rugs. So far you’ve been stuck buying hearing aid supplies and bladder control pads.”
Madison’s eyes twinkled with mirth. “But they were the new and improved version, I’ll have you know. And Miss Sybille was thrilled with my selection.”
“You might even say she was so excited she peed her pants!” Genny quipped.
The women dissolved into laughter, until the phone rang and interrupted them. Madison got up to answer the old-fashioned rotary dial wall phone in her grandmother’s kitchen as Genny poured more coffee.
“Miz Reynolds?” a deep voice said through the receiver. “This is Cutter Montgomery. I was just calling to make sure you were doing all right, ma’am. I know you had a pretty rough morning.”
“Cutter, how nice of you to call! That was very thoughtful. And yes, I’m doing as well as can be expected, I suppose.”
“I thought you handled yourself like a real pro, Miz Reynolds.”
“Mrs. Reynolds makes me sound so old. Call me Madison.”
She could hear the smile on the other end of the line. “Would you settle for Miss Maddy?” he compromised.
The name sounded so delicious coming from his lips, she could not help but return the smile. “Miss Maddy will be fine.”
“You take care now, Miss Maddy. Let me know if you need anything.”
“Thank you, Cutter, I’ll keep that in mind. Bye now.” She was still smiling as she hung up the phone and faced her friend. “He is the nicest young man. If he was ten years younger, he would be perfect for Bethani.”
“Forget Bethani. If I was twenty years younger, he would be perfect for me!” Genny grinned. “That boy is nine kinds of good-looking.”
“If you were twenty years younger, you would be jail-bait. Go for ten.”
Genesis waved her hand in dismissal. “I’d still be too old for him. He’s only like twenty-five or something.”
“So? Some guys like older women.”
“And some women like older men,” she countered. “Don’t think you’re getting out of telling me about your reunion with Brash deCordova.” Her charming dimples flashed before the coffee mug hid them.
“Reunion?” Madison scoffed. “It’s not like I ever had a relationship with him to begin with. Back in high school, he barely knew I was alive.”
“We were but lowly freshmen, after all.”
Madison settled at the table once more, feeling the effects of the strenuous morning. “I may not be able to walk in the morning,” she moaned. “So what’s his story, anyway?”
“Whose? Cutter’s or Brash’s?”
Madison shrugged. “Both, I guess. I’ve been away too long. I haven’t kept up with all the local gossip and comings and goings.”
“I was gone as long as you were, you know.”
“But you came back six months before me,” Madison reminded her smartly. And thank goodness you’re here, she thought. She wasn’t sure she could face her old hometown without her best friend by her side.
She had to admit, she had questioned the wisdom of Genny’s decision to move back at first. What did a tiny town like Naomi have to offer her wandering and creative friend? But she said she was tired of drifting and was ready to come home. She had her mind set on opening her own business. When Madison’s own world crumbled just five months later and Genny begged her to join her in the sister cities, Madison had not hesitated. She could not imagine being here now without dear Genesis.
Pulling herself from her musings, Madison added, “Besides, you get all the good gossip at the café. You’re already up to speed on both towns.”
Technically two distinct entities, complete with a long history of rivalry, a railroad track divided the towns of Naomi and Juliet. Gossip flowed freely over the boundary lines.
Genny nodded. “It’s even better than being a hairdresser. I have as many male customers as I do female, so I get both sides of the story.”
“So? What’s their stories? Start with Cutter.”
“From what I can tell, he is the local heart-throb for girls and women of all ages. I swear I saw your great Aunt Lerlene blush the other day when he opened the door for her. And you should hear the way even the junior high girls giggle when he comes into the café! He just has a way of wrapping the opposite sex around his little finger. I think it’s
those chameleon eyes. He has hazel eyes, just like yours, that change with whatever color he’s wearing.”
“Sounds to me like you might just be one of those women he has twisted around his finger,” Madison teased.
Again her friend gave a dismissive wave. She never missed a beat as she continued with her story. “He’s a looker, I’ll give you that, but I don’t believe in robbing the cradle. He’s a welder by trade, hence the welding rig he drives around with 24/7. I think he might be Fire Chief or something. Seems like he’s always wearing that radio and rushing off in the middle of a meal to go to a fire or a wreck. Always comes back to pay, though, so that says something about his character. He seems to be a very nice young man, always polite and respectful and always saying ‘yes ma’am’ and ‘no ma’am’.”
“Does he have a girlfriend?”
“Callie Beth Irwin likes to think so, but I don’t think Cutter got the memo.”
“And Brash?” She hoped her voice sounded more conversational than curious. “Why didn’t I ever see him around town the times I came back to visit?”
“Well, you remember he got that scholarship to play football.”
“Of course. Next to Tug Montgomery and his Heisman trophy, Brash is the biggest thing that ever happened to The Sisters.”
Genny nodded. “So he tried out for the pros and got drafted by one of those teams up North. Minnesota or Milwaukee or somewhere like that,” she said breezily.
“I thought Michigan.”
“Okay, whatever. Somewhere cold. Anyway, he said he missed the warm weather. And then his girlfriend came up pregnant, so he came back to Texas and got married. By that time, you and I had already moved away. He got a job coaching at Texas A&M and commuted back and forth for a while. Then he got a job at Baylor and even moved to Waco for a few years, before he came back here to join the Police Department.”
“From coaching to police chief?” Madison asked incredulously. “Calling football plays hardly qualifies him for chasing down criminals!”
“Ah, you forget, this is Friday-night-lights territory, where football reigns supreme. Being hometown football hero/turned college/turned pro/turned coach makes him royalty. He can be anything he wants.”
“Gee, I feel safer already,” Madison said sardonically.
“Hey, you jest, but from what I understand, no one wants to disappoint the mighty Brash deCordova, so for the most part, folks obey the law and toe the line.” Genesis’s dimples made another appearance. “To be honest,” she grinned, “it makes town a little boring.”
“Well, today’s event should stir a little excitement. They can debate whether Ronny Gleason died of a heart attack or sheer exhaustion. I never knew the chicken business was so hard.”
“Or maybe we could get lucky and it could be a murder.”
“Lucky?” Madison stared at her friend in something akin to horror. “Have you lost your mind? You honestly wish there was a murderer running around The Sisters?”
“Well, only for a day or two. I’m sure Brash would rush in to save the day and protect us from all evil.”
“I guess he could use his super-human football charm or something,” Madison muttered.
“No doubt. But at least it would be a little excitement.”
“Well, I, for one, have had all the excitement I can handle for a while. Finding a dead body should use up my quota for at least five years.” She made her prediction as she stood and pushed her chair beneath the kitchen table. “Excuse me for a minute. I have to go re-wash my clothes. Again.”
***
After Genesis left, Madison kept herself busy by sweeping and mopping the kitchen linoleum. She finished just as the front door opened, announcing the kids’ noisy arrival home from school.
She bit her lower lip, wondering if her children had heard the news. If not, should she tell them? They were bound to find out eventually but they were both so sensitive.
“Hey, Mom!” Blake called out. “You home?”
“In the kitchen! But enter with care, the floor is wet!”
The floor was the least of their concerns as the teenagers crowded through the doorway, seeing who could push through the portal first. Blake, being taller and bigger than his sister, won. He elbowed her as he nodded toward their mother and smugly grinned. “See? I knew the rumors in Study Hall weren’t true.”
“What-What rumors?” Madison asked with dread.
“We heard you were having a steamy affair with some chicken grower, killed him this morning in a fit of rage, and got arrested for murder.” Blake, sensitive soul that he was, plucked an apple from the fruit bowl and chomped into it noisily.
“What!”
“Oh, don’t worry, we didn’t believe that one,” Bethani assured her mother breezily. She brushed a kiss across Madison’s cheek on the way to the refrigerator.
“That one? There were more?”
Bethani turned around to favor her mother with an exasperated expression. Rolling her eyes to the ceiling, she said, “This is Juliet, the most boring town in the state of Texas. Of course there were more rumors. It is, after all, the favorite pastime of rednecks near and far.”
Madison wrinkled her nose at her daughter’s snide comment. “Careful, there,” she warned. “Your voice is dripping with disdain. You don’t want it getting all over your snack.”
The teen rolled her eyes once more, pulling out the makings of a sandwich while her brother retrieved the bread from the cupboard. The teen’s pretty face settled into a somber expression as she opened the lunchmeat. Madison did not miss the note of worry in her daughter’s voice as she asked, “Was the other rumor true? Was he really burned beyond recognition?”
“Burned? What are you talking about, honey?”
“We heard you found that man you were working for. He had fallen into the incinerator and was burned so badly the police couldn’t recognize him.”
“Oh, my word!” This time, Madison rolled her eyes. “No, sweetie, that is not at all true. Mr. Gleason did not burn up in his incinerator.”
“But you did find him, right?” Blake asked, his own expression suddenly serious. “That’s what all the kids at school are saying.”
“Yes, honey, I did find him.”
“So we heard a couple of other versions, too. One was that he died from some crazy chicken virus.” Fully recovered from his brief bout of worry, Blake was grinning once again as he layered three slices of ham onto his sandwich. “I, personally, preferred the version where you single-handedly saved an entire house full of chickens from noxious gas fumes. But alas,” he bemoaned, putting his hand to his forehead with great flair, “you were unable to save the man himself, just his flock.”
In spite of herself, Madison giggled at her son’s dramatics. She quickly bit back her smile and chastised the teen. “Blake, a man did die today. It’s no laughing matter. And don’t forget to try out for the school’s drama club, by the way.”
“Sorry, going to be too busy playing baseball. Guess who made Varsity?”
“You made the team?” Madison squealed in delight. “That’s fantastic, honey! Congratulations!” She grabbed her son and hugged him with enthusiasm.
“Chill, Mom,” he laughed, caught somewhere between being embarrassed and being proud. You never quite outgrew the need to please your parents, after all. “It’s just high school, not the majors.”
“Cotton Kings today, Texas Rangers tomorrow,” Madison predicted.
“You know,” his sister drawled, gearing up for some drama of her own, “he’d get better exposure if he played for a bigger school. You know, like one that actually showed up on the map. Maybe we should move back to Dallas. For his future baseball career and all.”
“You are so thoughtful, Beth. Always thinking of others, never yourself.” Madison patted her daughter’s blond head with a heavy hand as the girl sat down at the table.
“Ouch, Mom,” she complained, but did not give up her efforts. “Hey, I’m willing to sacrifice for my broth
er. If we need to move back home for Blake, I’m in.”
“We’ve barely had time to get settled here. We are not moving back to Dallas anytime soon,” Madison declared as she made glasses of sweet tea for the three of them.
As she brought the offering to the table and took a seat beside Bethani, her daughter looked at her in concern. “Mom,” the teen said with a frown, “your hand is trembling. Are you all right? What really happened today?”
Read more now, Chicken Scratch, http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TYV10GY
