“Nasty mess afterward, though, with all the flies and bugs . . .”
“Yeah, but that’s where you get the real bang for the buck.”
“Definitely.” They both laughed.
Bonding over a delinquent past. That has to be one for the books.
The bell over the door chimed, and Molly pushed to her feet to greet her customers, patting Helena on the shoulder as she left. Putting her earbuds back in, Helena returned to the gallery of hunks, searching for a good image that fit the tone. She liked working here in the coffee shop. Sure there were distractions, but she actually enjoyed them. Back home, days would go by without her having a real, face-to-face conversation with another human being.
Hell, she didn’t even have to speak to the baristas at her local shop anymore. They saw her coming and got her order ready, so she could just pay and leave with a minimum of human interaction. In fact, she’d had more conversations with people in Magnolia Beach in the last week than she’d had in the last month at home.
She finally found the picture she had in mind, and her focus narrowed as she mocked up image after image, finding her groove and staying in it. Finally, she had a whole package she loved and knew her client was going to flip for. After hitting Send, she sat up and pain shot up her spine. A glance at the clock told her she’d been hunched over the computer for the better part of two hours. The customers Molly had left her to wait on were gone, and Molly was on the computer behind the counter working on what looked like spreadsheets. Two more people had come in at some point and now sat on the puffy green couch reading the Mobile newspaper together.
The man didn’t look familiar, but the woman certainly did, and Helena’s good mood evaporated.
Perfect, pretty, prudish Amy Lee Huggins, with her holier-than-everyone attitude. Condescension and judgment were her forte. I might have been a troublemaker, but she was just plain mean. And while Helena got ostracized for that troublemaking and treated with derision, Amy Lee, the daughter of the pastor at Grace Baptist, was beloved and fawned over, held up as a model by parents who didn’t know what she was really like.
Amy Lee must have felt Helena’s eyes on her, because she looked up. Helena did her best to smile, but Amy Lee merely rolled her eyes and went back to the paper. Yep, still a bitch.
That was kind of the final straw. Her life wasn’t some twelve-step program where she had to make amends to those she’d wronged in the past, but she didn’t need to make new enemies or renew old animosities, either.
But seeing Amy Lee and remembering how awful she was reminded Helena that she was owed some apologies, too. While she might not be carrying grudges, she shouldn’t have to slink around as if she were ashamed of herself, either.
She packed up her laptop, waved good-bye to Molly, and then went the long way to the door—the path that would lead her past the couch. “Long time, no see, Amy Lee. How are you?”
“Helena. How surprising to see you.” Amy Lee wasn’t even trying to fake it.
Helena noted with a little evil pleasure that Amy Lee wasn’t looking as good as she might for her age. Obviously being that judgmental permanently carved lines into a person’s face. It was shallow and mean of her to gloat, but Grannie always said that “you can’t be pretty on the outside if you’re ugly on the inside,” and it seemed that was catching up with Amy Lee.
She put on her best smile. “Everyone keeps saying that. It’s kind of flattering.”
Amy Lee’s eyebrows went up. “I don’t—”
“I’d love to stay and catch up, but I’ve just got so much do. Maybe I’ll see you around. Take care, okay?” Oh, the vapid perkiness made her head hurt, but it was worth it to see the look on Amy Lee’s face. That alone buoyed her spirits as she settled her sunglasses on her nose and started back toward Grannie’s house. This time, she made a point to smile and greet people by name, all the while waving like a pageant queen on her victory walk. Forget staying under the radar. She really didn’t care what these people thought anymore, and she wasn’t going to let them shame her for her past, either.
The visible shock and awe she left in her wake shouldn’t have given her such pleasure, but it did. And she refused to feel the least bit bad about that, either.
Chapter 7
While it was the rare project that went exactly as planned, discovering rotten floorboards in the sunroom was the kind of issue that brought everything to a screeching halt and messed up Ryan’s schedule something fierce.
Although Helena had been dismayed at the damage, she’d accepted his pronouncement and recommendation without comment, a real change from someone who’d worried he’d bring the whole house down around her ears by tearing out a useless wall just a few days ago. It was a bit unsettling.
At first he thought he was imagining it, but as the evening went on, he knew there was definitely a subtle change in Helena’s attitude tonight. For lack of a better word, she was friendlier, less prickly. She hadn’t invited him to a tea party or anything, but she wasn’t ignoring him, either, nor was she shooting out barbs at every opportunity. He’d even deliberately left her a few openings, just to be sure he wasn’t imagining things.
It was unsettling, but it was a relief, too.
While he’d been ripping up floorboards and examining the damage, Helena must have made fifty or more trips up and down the stairs, moving as much as she could into the attic to declutter the downstairs and remove tripping hazards. She was grumbling about it under her breath, and he caught the occasional word now and then when she passed, but honestly, the sight of Helena’s long muscular legs on display in a pair of too-short cutoffs was distracting enough to keep him from making sense of what she was saying.
It was also distracting him from the project at hand. He tried to push the visual out of his mind and measured for the fourth time. Damn it, the joist had rot, too. He reached for his flashlight to examine the damage closer just as a yelp floated down the stairs, followed almost immediately by a hard crash.
He sprinted up the stairs two at a time. “Helena!”
“In here. I’m okay.”
“Here” was a small bedroom, which, based on the decor, must’ve been Helena’s childhood bedroom. Helena herself was in front of the closet, covered in clothes, books, and boxes, with a chair on its side behind her. It didn’t take a genius to put together what had happened, but he asked anyway. “What did you do?”
“I leaned too far forward, and the chair slipped out from under me. I grabbed the shelf on my way down.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah.” She moved her shoulder experimentally, then winced as she shifted and rubbed a hand over her backside. “Just a little bruised.”
He offered a hand and pulled her to her feet. Then he stuck his head in the closet. “It doesn’t look like you pulled the shelf completely out of the wall. If you’ll go get my screwdriver, I can get it back up easily enough.”
“Thanks.”
It was kind of weird being in Helena’s bedroom. There were posters on the wall firmly freezing it in time at the turn of the century, and many of the clothes on the floor looked dated, even to him. He knelt, setting a half-opened box back upright, and was surprised to find the yearbook from their senior year on top. He couldn’t imagine an eighteen-year-old Helena having enough school spirit to warrant buying one.
But the yearbook was just one of many mementos—not that he understood what meaning these particular keepsakes would have, but they were definitely the odds and ends of high school.
“Oh Lord, I can’t believe Grannie kept all that stuff.” Helena stood in the doorway, his screwdriver in one hand and two bottles of beer held by the necks in the other. She passed him a beer and the screwdriver.
“Thanks.”
She poked at a notebook with the toe of her shoe. “I told her years ago that she could throw all of it out.”
&nb
sp; “Why?”
“Because I don’t want it or need it. I’m more of a minimalist. Mainly because my place is way too small for a bunch of crap.”
“But you might want it one day.” He tightened the screws she’d loosened and reset the shelf.
“If I haven’t needed it or missed it by now, I think it’s safe to assume I won’t in the future.” She took a sip of her beer and cocked her head to the side. “Wait. You still have all your high school stuff?”
“In a box somewhere.” At her look, he added, “It’s not like I sift through it on a regular basis reliving my glory days or anything.”
“Good. Because that would just be sad.” She sighed as she squatted. “This is quite the mess.”
Maybe because she had been friendlier tonight and he figured it was safe, he went to help her, gathering up a few photos that had achieved distance in the fall. The one on top was of Helena—maybe about seventeen or so—seated on the tailgate of a beat-up truck, her usual crowd gathered around her. She looked at it as she took it from him. “Wow. That brings back memories. Tate and I look so young.” After a pause, she added, “I wonder what ever happened to Paulie and Sid.”
“You don’t know?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t talked to Paulie since he left for the Navy. I just assumed for all those years that Sid was still in town.”
“He left not long after you did.”
“Oh. Do you know where he went?”
“No. They were your friends. Why didn’t you keep up with them? Or look them up at some point?”
She looked at him like he was a little slow. “Ryan, honey, when you’re trying to forget your past, you don’t go looking for it.”
That was a good point, but it seemed like a lonely and scary way to start over. Before he could comment on that, though, she pulled a T-shirt out of the pile and held it up. “Oh, now this is awesome.”
It was a simple black T-shirt with MAGNOLIA BEACH stenciled in bright red across the front. As Helena turned the shirt around, he remembered what was on the back. Still, the exaggerated hindquarters of the school’s pirate mascot with YOU KNOW YOU WANT THIS BOOTY! written underneath made him laugh. It had been quite the scandal junior year, as no one really knew where the shirts came from and no one who had one had been willing to talk, claiming the shirts had just “appeared” in their gym lockers. The shirts, which had horrified the faculty and staff, had been confiscated on sight, and anyone wearing one on school property risked suspension. He hadn’t gotten one, much to his dismay at the time.
“This brings back memories,” she said with a laugh.
“That it does. I thought there’d been a bonfire of the entire stock. How’d you get one?”
The corner of her mouth twitched as she cut her eyes in his direction. “Who do you think designed them?”
Of course. There had always been suspicion that Helena was involved somehow, but never enough proof. In retrospect, that particular suspicion hung over everything that happened in Magnolia Beach.
“It was one of the few things I got away with.” There was a touch of pride in her voice.
“I’m sure you got away with a lot more than that.”
She sat and started putting things back into the box quickly. “You’d be surprised, actually. Shortly after this, people really started cracking down on me, watching me like a hawk. I swear, if I dropped a tissue accidentally on Front Street, I risked getting hauled in for littering. I’m just lucky Grannie knew the sheriff so well. Otherwise, she’d have had to dig me out from under the county jail.”
He couldn’t argue with that. “Well, you seem to be an upstanding citizen now.”
She cut her eyes at him. “If you’re asking if I’m the one who rolled the high school last weekend, the answer is no.”
“I never thought you were.”
“Tell that to Mrs. Riley, then.” The annoyed undertone said a lot about what Helena was facing right now.
“Mrs. Riley is completely senile. Everyone knows that.” He paused. Helena’s openness to confessing about the T-shirts brought up an old curiosity. “But I have to ask. . . .”
Helena raised an eyebrow at him. “What?”
“How’d you manage to get the keys to the chief’s police cruiser? I remember it hadn’t been hotwired when they found it over in Bayou La Batre.”
Face unreadable, Helena asked, “What makes you think I know anything about that?”
“Because.” When she didn’t say anything, he added, “Look, the statute of limitations is long past, so it’s not like you could get into any trouble or anything. Come on, confession’s good for the soul.”
“Even if I had something to confess, I’m not Catholic. And neither are you, I might add.”
“What if I confess first?” Helena didn’t say anything, so he sat next to her. “Okay, senior year, I helped Toby Martin and Frank Holland steal the Parker High mascot.”
She snorted and waved a hand, completely unimpressed with his confession. “Oh please. Tell me something I don’t already know.”
“How do you know about that?” He, Frank, and Toby had never said a word to anyone.
“Everyone knew it. But no one would rat out the great Ryan Tanner because even if we had, you’d never get hauled up the way others would in that situation. And since the dog was returned in good health, there was no harm, no foul.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
That kind of burst his bubble. Sure, he’d had a little guilt at getting away with it, but at the same time, it had given him a little kick that he had. “Well, that’s annoying.”
“Oh, you bet it is,” she grumbled.
“No one ever said anything.”
“Do you honestly think that any Tanner—especially you—was going to get into any trouble for anything less than being caught red-handed committing a felony? Pfft.”
She pushed to her feet and headed downstairs. He had to trot to catch up. “Don’t pretend that any Tanner, especially me, was—or is—untouchable or anything.”
Helena paused at the kitchen door, giving him that same look that called him simple. “But you were. All of you were. Hell, Jamie is the one who hacked into the school’s e-mails and sent those pictures to everyone. All he got was a few hours of detention because they couldn’t ‘prove it.’” She included the air quotes disgustedly. “I got more detention than that—without solid proof, mind you—for hijacking the PA system at the game.”
“That was epic revenge, by the way. Jamie is still sulking over it.” Helena shrugged off his words, but not before he saw the beginnings of a smile. “And, if you ask me, Jamie totally deserved it, so good job. How’d you manage it, though?”
She seemed to be debating whether or not to tell him.
“The principal always thought you must’ve done it when he caught you breaking into the school.”
She shook her head. “That’s not why I was breaking into the school.”
“It’s not?”
“Of course not. I just liked to use the computer lab at night. The computer I had at home couldn’t even handle simple Photoshop, much less the stuff I was trying to do. And hey, look at me now, so it was worth it, I think.”
This was a whole new window into Helena’s character. “Wait. You trained yourself for a career in graphic design by breaking into the school’s computer lab? How many times did you break in?”
“Enough.” With a grin, she pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen.
His entire brain was short-circuiting as he followed her. “Let’s back up. If you didn’t hijack the PA system by breaking into the school in the middle of the night, how did you manage it?”
For a minute, he thought Helena wasn’t going to answer him. Finally, she took a long drink of her beer and shrugged again. “It’s amazing how fa
r a little side boob could get you with the A/V club back then.”
“You flashed the A/V club?”
“Not completely. And it’s not like I’m proud of it or anything, but you do what you have to do, sometimes.”
“Oh my God.”
“You said yourself that it was epic and well deserved. Epic things require extraordinary efforts.” She lifted her chin. “I was willing to go the distance for that.”
“You are one interesting woman, Helena.”
There was that grin again. “Why, thank you.”
“One last question.”
“I think we’ve done enough for tonight.”
“Just one more.” With a resigned but amused sigh, Helena motioned for him to proceed. “How did you manage to start a fire in the football equipment shed?”
All the amusement on her face disappeared, leaving her shuttered and guarded. “That was an accident.”
Something was off now. “I’m not implying that it wasn’t. I’m just wondering how it happened.”
Helena shrugged. “You get a little carried away, things happen. . . .” She wasn’t making eye contact, and she looked uncomfortable. “Another beer?”
“Fires just don’t start. There’s got to be a story.”
“Just being stupid, I guess.”
All things considered, Helena’s vagueness struck him as weird. It wasn’t like she had anything to lose by telling the truth about it. So why the reluctance all of a sudden? He looked at her closely and realized the truth. “You didn’t start the fire.”
“I confessed and paid the damages.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
Helena didn’t say anything, essentially proving her innocence.
“So why would you take the blame if you didn’t actually do it?” One more shrug from her, and he knew. “It was Tate. He’s the only person you’d take that fall for.”
She took a breath like she planned to argue, but she sighed instead. “It seemed easier. Everyone thought it was me anyway, and it would have been much worse for Tate. . . .” She picked at the label on her beer bottle as she trailed off.
Something to Prove Page 10
