by Rachel Hauck
The woman patted her own round middle. “Don’t I know it.”
Lennon barked that someone should cut Colette a piece of cake, which she accepted with gratitude. But really, she couldn’t eat a thing. Her belly was full of anticipation, anxiety. Excitement.
She needed to get on with her plan, right or wrong. And she could feel her courage fading. Checking her watch, she realized the car she’d ordered would arrive any minute.
Yet she couldn’t let all of FRESH’s efforts go to waste.
So she forced down the cake and forced her attention on Lennon as he introduced staff members. Finally, when her cake was gone, she set her plate down and inquired about the ladies’ room. “I’d like to freshen up.”
“Of course, forgive us.” He bustled about as if he expected neglecting to offer her a freshen-up minute might cost him. Fine, let him sweat a little. She’d need the credit in a few minutes. “Karli, can you show her to our executive lounge?”
“Please, Lennon, just point me in the right direction. A girl likes a bit of privacy in the loo.” Colette lightly gripped his arm, offering the half wink she’d perfected that said, “I like you.”
“Down the hall, on your right.” He snapped his fingers and Karli passed over a key. “To the executive lounge. You’ll find everything you need in there.”
“Very nice.” Colette clutched her wristlet by her side. Thank goodness she’d had the presence of mind to exchange her big handbag for a wristlet before she left her suite this morning. Lugging it just to the loo would’ve been ridiculous.
She almost made her exit alone, but Ford trailed out of the conference room behind her.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to the executive lounge.” Colette dangled the key in front of him.
“We just got here. Why don’t you sit and relax? Let them wine and dine you. Jack’s put a lot on the line for this account.” Ford’s heavy stride thumped against the industrial carpet. “And we moved heaven and earth to get you here this week. This is not like you to be so disengaged.”
“Ford, I’m grateful to Jack and FRESH. I’m sorry, I’m a bit distracted. But please assure everyone I will be their spokeswoman.”
He made a face, then smiled. “Go freshen up. You can tell them when you return to the boardroom.”
“Thank you. My eighty-two-year-old bladder is not what it used to be, and unless you want to call for ‘cleanup on aisle four,’ I’d better go.”
Ford cleared his throat, stepping back. “See you in the room, then.”
“Of course. Relax. Have another piece of cake.” Colette pressed her back against the wall just inside the lounge door, breathing deep, feeling like a schoolgirl who had just escaped the headmaster. As she and Peg managed on one occasion or the other.
She waited another few seconds, then peeked out. But excitement took its toll on her heart, and she needed a moment to gather herself. She reclined in the nearest chair and breathed, not allowing herself to really ponder the next few minutes. Or the afternoon.
When she felt steady, she peeked out again. The hall was clear. Colette tossed the lounge key in the corner by the door and darted for the elevator.
The doors opened immediately and she stepped into the car, riding down to the main floor with her heart fluttering.
She’d not done anything so outlandish in years. And for a thrilling moment, it felt wonderful to break out. Forgive me, Jack.
On the main floor, Colette finally breathed. Tiptoeing past the receptionist, who was involved with something on her phone, Colette met her waiting car. A silver Mercedes parked by the door.
The things money could buy!
“Ms. Greer?” A man in a white shirt and dark slacks approached with the keys.
“That’s me.” She shoved past him and dropped in behind the wheel. She knew Ford. He’d be suspicious about now. “Show me how she works.”
She’d owned a car back in the eighties but rarely drove it, so she’d sold it. Now her hands itched to grip the wheel and drive. Command her destiny.
“You hit this here.” He touched a button by the steering wheel and the car fired up. “And enter your destination into the GPS here.”
“Push-button cars. What will they think of next?” She shooed the Hertz man aside and pulled out the map she’d carefully folded into her wristlet. “I don’t need a GPS. I have a map. Just need to get out of Nashville.”
Vivica Spenser, I learned so much from you.
“Where are you headed?”
“Heart’s Bend.”
“Turn right out of the parking lot.” He pointed to the parking lot’s edge. “Take a left and you’ll see signs for I-40. Go west until you see route 70. Head—”
“North. Thank you. I can take it from there.”
“You look familiar. Should I know you?”
Colette smiled. He couldn’t be more than twenty-one, maybe twenty-two. “Did your granny or mamá watch soap operas?”
“My granny. Shoot, you couldn’t move in her house when Always Tomorrow came on.” He laughed, shaking his head. “See, it’s ingrained in my psyche forever. Can’t remember a chemistry formula for class, but I can remember a Vivica Spenser line, ‘Never you mind, there’s always tomorrow.’ Then she’d toss water in someone’s face and laugh.”
Colette swallowed a moan. That line . . . one of the worst pieces of writing ever. The writers had come up with it early on, hoping to play off Gone with the Wind and get viewers quoting the show.
Sadly, it worked. The line was written into every script at least once. As much as Colette hated that line, it bought her parody commercials and funny sketches on late-night television, along with the water tossing. The line was the reason she even invented drink tossing. And why she was sitting here today.
“Well, I’m that woman. Vivica Spenser. And thank you so much for your help.” Colette slammed the car door and shifted into gear while the Hertz man waved good-bye. She sped out of the parking lot, a death grip on the wheel.
It took her a few minutes to get the feel for this modern motor, but once she hit I-40, she was feeling mighty proud of her driving prowess.
But that’s when she realized her carefully executed plan had no second leg. She’d only planned to escape Nashville. What was she to do once she arrived in Heart’s Bend?
AFTER THE WINTER FORMAL
FEBRUARY 1949
“What a sight you were tonight.” Peg barged into the room the girls shared, her voice an icy wind. Her hair had slipped from its pins and curled against her flushed cheeks.
“Where have you been?” Colette, tucked down under her bed-covers, glanced at her sister through a short angle of light coming from the nightstand lamp. The round alarm clock tick-tocked 1:15 a.m. “I told Uncle Fred you were coming in straightaway.”
“You made such a spectacle of yourself tonight.” Peg teetered from side to side as she kicked off her heels and peeled away her gloves. “Showing off on the dance floor. The girls’ restroom was all atwitter about you kissing Jimmy in the shadows.”
“All atwitter? I never heard a single word.” Colette reached for her minuscule dance-off trophy. She’d never won anything before, and this little trophy was her sign of good things to come.
“Everyone was talking . . .”
Everyone?
“That’s not true. Peg, are you drunk?”
“No.” Peg anchored her foot on the side of her bed and hitched up her skirt to roll down her stockings. “Well, are you steady with him now?”
“I smell beer on you.” Old man Morley drank it often enough when they lived on the farm.
“Maybe.”
“Peg!” Aunt Jean never should have let Peg go to the dance with a college chap.
“Don’t lecture me, Miss Goodie-Goodie. Sometimes—” Peg waved her stockings like nylon flags at Colette. “I really hate you.”
“Peg, stop, you don’t know what you’re saying.” Colette gripped the trophy, its sharp metal edges b
iting into her palm. “You don’t mean it.”
“I know exactly what I’m saying. You knew how I feel about him, yet you went to the dance with him anyway.”
“He asked me. Was I to say no?”
“Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.” Peg disappeared in the bathroom Uncle Fred built for them under the dormer eaves. From her place in bed, Colette watched her sister dunk her stockings in the sink and reach for the bar of soap. “He’d have asked me if you’d turned him down.”
“You don’t know that, Peg.” This conversation went down like bitter dregs. “You’re drunk. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I know full well what I’m saying. I want, for once, what I want.”
“For once? You always get what you want, Peg. We’ve lived in Heart’s Bend six months and you’re one of the most popular girls in school.”
Colette shifted down under her covers. Drink made Peg even more cruel. Mr. Morley was a funny, sleepy drunk. But Peg seemed to be harsh and angry.
Since arriving in Tennessee, she and Peg fought constantly. Peg seemed to be fueled by some ridiculous jealousy. And mean. She was cold to Colette, demanding and arrogant.
“Why do you think Spice didn’t have a date? He came for you. Then I could have Jimmy.”
“That’s ridiculous. Then why did you bring Drummond? He seems such a nice chap. Don’t tell me you were going to leave him all alone.”
“He’s a college man. He’d have got on well enough.” Peg emerged from the bathroom, slipping from her dress and stomping it on the floor beneath her feet.
“Peg, careful. Aunt Jean paid good money for that frock.”
She stooped to pick it up, then swooned into the reading chair under the window. “I’m so tired.”
Colette slid out of bed, reaching for her sister. “Here, let me help you. Where are your pajamas? Let’s get you in bed.”
“You’re so selfish, Colette. You stole my papá from me.”
Colette released Peg and sank down to the floor. “I don’t want to fight with you. You’re drunk.”
“I didn’t get to say good-bye.” Peg waved her finger at Colette, her eyelids at half-mast, her speech slurred, and a single tear slipping from the corner of her eye.
“Neither did I.”
“He loved you more.” Peg shot forward, cupping her hand over Colette’s mouth. “Everyone loved you more.”
Colette tore her hand away. “Stop . . . This is ridiculous. No one loved me more.” At times, Peg’s jealousy knew no bounds. Truth didn’t matter. Only the rage in her soul that she caged and fed like a personal pet. “I’m going to bed.”
Peg could sleep in her bra and panties for all Colette cared.
“Just how did you get Jimmy to ask you to the dance? Hmm? Lure him out to the fir tree and promise him your virtue? Wouldn’t Papá be proud?”
“You take that back.” Colette swerved toward her sister, hand raised. “And yes, wouldn’t he be proud. Look at you, with your mussed hair, your breath reeking of alcohol, and you traipsing in at this hour. What were you and Drummond doing, Peg?”
“Drummond Branson—” Peg sing-songed his name, drawing pins from her hair, her arms like jelly. “He’s a man.” Her forced laugh sent chills through Colette. “I’m tired of these boys at school.”
“Except Jimmy?”
Peg regarded her. “He’s not like the others. He’s kind, sweet, wounded like you and me, Lettie.” Peg’s honest response was soft with sleep. “And now you take the one person that made me feel safe.”
“Oh, Peg, I’m not taking him—”
“Yes, you are.” Peg fired up from her chair, charging at Colette. “I told you I liked him.”
“But you flirt with all the boys. I didn’t know he made you feel safe.” Colette stroked Peg’s hair. “That’s how he makes me feel.”
Peg shrugged away from Colette’s touch. “No one wants me.” She curled her lip, then gagged, jumping from the chair and stumbling to the bathroom. “Not the Morleys, not Mamá or Papá.”
Colette pressed against the wall as Peg wretched into the toilet. A moment later she appeared with her hair ratted, going every direction.
“Peg, please go to bed.”
She fell forward on her twin mattress, mumbling in her pillow. Her muffled sob speared Colette’s heart. “They sent me to the country when I begged them to let me stay at home.”
“They sent both of us away, Peg. We were safer in the country.”
“They were rid of us, that’s what it was about.”
“Peg, you can’t mean that. You know it’s not true.”
“And then they died on us. How safe were we then? And no one wanted us until Mrs. Morley made Aunt Jean take us.”
“Honey, no. They wanted us. Remember, Mrs. Morley wrote to them right away, but she had the wrong address.” Colette smoothed Peg’s tangled hair, her cold fingers slipping against her hot face. “Now come on, go to bed. You’ll see things more clearly in the light of day.”
“Jimmy doesn’t want me.”
“It’s cold tonight, isn’t it?” Colette reached for the quilt draped over the footboard, covering Peg.
“Does he? He doesn’t . . .”
“Peg, Jimmy and me, we fit together darling.”
“You fit together? Well, don’t you just fit with everyone.” Peg rolled over on her side and gripped Colette’s hand. And for a moment, they were sisters again. “But I-I love him. If you’d let him go, he’d choose me. I know he would.”
Lord help her, but Colette was trying to understand. But Peg lived in her own world, with her own picture of things. Could she not see that Jimmy never picked her? Even when Colette stood aside?
“Peg, just let Jimmy choose. He’s a big lad and knows his own mind.”
“No!” Peg’s nails cut into Colette’s palm. “You always do this.” She was on the verge of one of her rages. “Take, take, take. Just like when Papá came to visit you never made room for me. You just ran into his arms, his darling Lettie, and left me standing on the outside.”
“Peg!” Colette jerked her hand free. “You chose to stay on the outside. Even when he called you to him, you ran the other way.”
Peg flopped over on her side. “It haunts me, Colette. Their deaths haunt me.”
“I know, Peg, me too. Say your prayers—”
She bolted upright with such force she nearly smacked Colette. “To a God who killed our parents? No, never.”
Colette exhaled. “I can pray for us both.”
“Do not pray for me.”
If time healed all wounds, then it passed too slowly for them. As Colette hung up her robe and crawled into bed, the joy of her night with Jimmy long gone, she let her tears run as she whispered her prayers. The wind rushed against the house, rattling the windows, shaking Colette.
Help us, God. Please help us.
TAYLOR
Pink.
The dang test was pink. She had taken one yesterday and another again today, hoping for some sort of false positive. Or that one of these stupid sticks would tell her what she wanted—“You’re not pregnant.”
So craziness abounded as she took the test over and over, hoping for a different result. Sitting on the side of the tub, Taylor stared at the bright double-line result. Pink. Pink!
A soft knock sounded on the door. “Tay?” Emma. She’d stopped by on her way to work, her solicitude equal parts caring and nosiness. “Let me guess, you’re still pregnant.”
Taylor angled forward to open the door, holding up the test result. “Come in.”
Emma peeked around. “Pink?”
“Does that mean it’s a girl?”
“Absolutely.” Emma slipped in and sat next to Taylor on the edge of the old clawfoot tub. “I think you can stop taking pregnancy tests now. You’ve clearly passed.”
Taylor tossed the result stick in the trash. “But they were buy one get one free. I have six more under the sink.”
Emma laughed, wrapping Taylor
in a big sister’s hug. “It’s going to be fine.”
“For who? You? I don’t want to be pregnant. I can’t be pregnant. He doesn’t want kids.” She peered at Emma. “Did I tell you when we got married he said, ‘If it doesn’t work out we can walk away, no fuss, no muss.’ ”
She balked. “Then why’d you marry him?”
“I thought he was kidding, you know. Or that I misunderstood. I’d put it out of my mind until the other day. Now I’m wondering if it’s what he planned all along. Temporary marriage. And now I’m knocked up.”
Emma brushed Taylor’s hair away from her warm, sticky skin. “You’re going to have a sweet, beautiful, cooing baby!”
“Who cries and poops and wants to be fed at all hours. Who won’t cotton to being on a ten-hour photo shoot.”
“Then it looks like you and Jack have some talking to do.”
“I know.” She sighed. “I keep thinking, ‘I can’t go back now.’ ”
“On your marriage?”
“No, on being pregnant. But yeah, I guess my marriage too. I can never be un-pregnant. Unless of course Superman really can fly around the earth counterclockwise and reverse time.”
“Superman can reverse time?”
“Yeah, didn’t you know that?”
“I just thought he could leap tall buildings in a single bound. And change clothes in a phone booth.”
“He reversed time in one of the movies.”
“Which one? Old or new?”
“Oh my word, really? The old one. With Christopher Reeve.” Taylor stood and leaned on the sink, angling toward the mirror. “Do I look pregnant?”
“Do you mean are you glowing?” Emma’s angular, pretty face appeared over Taylor’s shoulder. “Maybe a little.”
“What am I going to do?”
“Have a baby.” Emma lightly turned Taylor by her shoulders. “Once you see your new baby’s face, you are never going to regret bringing her—”
“Or him.”
“Or him into the world.”
Taylor dropped her head on Emma’s shoulder, her tears tracing down the side of her nose. “I’m scared.”
