Curiouser (Girls of Wonder Lane Book 3)

by Coryell, Christina

  The most frustrating thing is the fact that I’ve never had this problem before. Even though I’m not the most outgoing person in the world, I’ve never been the one to fade into the wall or try to pretend I wasn’t present. But maybe my sense of belonging came from being in the place I called home. From the minute I entered the world until the day I left for Louisville, I’d occupied the same little circle of influence on God’s green earth. Maybe fitting in wasn’t so much having a group of friends as much as it was simply dwelling in the same rut as everyone else.

  Really, how many of my “friends” have contacted me since I moved to Louisville? Only Sadie. Not that I’ve longed to talk to any of them either.

  That thought doesn’t help matters as I stand on the porch of the two-story house that sits at the end of Wonder Lane. The stately jewel of the subdivision, without question. Even though Annie invited me over, I can’t imagine myself fitting in with Harley Laine. “Louisville’s sweetheart,” I heard someone call her on the news the other night.

  Since Jake arrived at the house and took Bailey to the park, there’s no way for me to fake some excuse for not attending. No doubt Annie would mention it to Jake later, and he would wonder what exactly I was doing when he watched Bailey, and why I lied to him. Not a conversation I want to have.

  Pressing my finger against the doorbell, I shift the cookies I made toward the crook of my arm. Even though Jake didn’t leave until later than normal last night, I set my alarm and woke up early so I could prepare something to bring along on my visit. Probably a leftover gesture I picked up from my mother—never arrive at someone’s house empty-handed.

  Annie flings open the door and her eyes widen as she takes in the plate of cookies.

  “Alexis is here!” she calls over her shoulder. “She brought snacks.” She smiles as she steps aside to let me in. “I knew I liked you.”

  Maybe I should take snacks with me everywhere. Hi, I’m Alexis, have a cookie.

  “I hope I’m not late,” I offer, which I recognize as pathetic as soon as the words pass my lips. It’s not like I’m meeting the Pope for breakfast or something. My neighbor invited me over to hang out.

  She leads me through the foyer into a dining room that looks like it belongs in an episode of a show on PBS. Far too classy for this little subdivision. It looks like it should be in the residence of a wealthy family in the south; one who has all the cousins over for holidays.

  I’m hearing southern twang ringing out with choruses of “welcome home, honey” in my mind when we cross into the living room, which has a cozy looking couch but otherwise is pretty drab. In fact, there’s a large water spot along the wall where there’s obviously been a leak at one time. No wonder Jake’s been over here doing some remodeling.

  “You barely missed seeing Harley with bed head. She was at Tiny’s with Ryan last night and somehow they ended up working in the kitchen.”

  “Tiny’s?” I ask hesitantly. Harley looks up at me from her place on the couch. At least I think it’s Harley. She’s wearing faded jeans with a huge hole in the knee and a plain white T-shirt that looks like it came out of one of those department store packages of undershirts. With her face free from makeup and her hair in a twisted knot near the top of her head, she looks significantly younger than she does on TV.

  “It’s a little greasy spoon diner that Harley hangs out at all the time,” Annie explains. “She met Ryan there too. Aww, isn’t that sweet. Let’s just get it out there and over with, so we don’t have to draw out the mushy stuff.”

  The girl just to the right of Harley on the couch chuckles at Annie’s statement.

  “Have you met Maddie?” Annie wants to know. She strips me of the cookies and places them on the coffee table.

  “Yeah, she nearly died in my yard,” I say, offering a forced smile. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  “You too,” Maddie says, reaching out to take one of the peanut butter cookies. “I really think I was in Josh’s yard, though. But I could be wrong, since I was suffering a lack of oxygen at the time.”

  Annie plops onto a beanbag in the corner, leaving room for me on the sofa. “Harley and Maddie know each other through work. Not that they work together, but Harley’s interviewed her.”

  “Oh,” I answer, glancing between Harley and Maddie. “Did someone call the cops when you took a nap in their yard?”

  Harley laughs as she carefully inspects the cookies, choosing one of the smallest. “Not exactly, although that sounds like something they would send me to cover. Maddie’s the corporate spokesperson for Kent Cooper.”

  The three of them smile as they look at one another, leaving me totally in the dark. “Sorry, Louisville newbie here. Who exactly is Kent Cooper?”

  “He owns Cooper Corporate Financial,” Annie quickly states. “His wife, Faith, comes in my shop all the time with her clothes. Harley is her biggest fan.”

  “She’s actually my fan,” Harley tells her with a wink. “The truth is, Faith and I are about the same size. I get a lot of her hand-me-downs. That goes no farther than this room.” She pointedly stares at Maddie, who holds her hands up in mock surrender.

  “You think I’m about to tell the Coopers that kind of information? I have a strict avoidance policy, thank you very much. All except for their daughter, who is semi-normal. I happened to walk in Cooper’s office last week when he was mid-breakfast, more aptly known as drinking raw eggs to the average person. I dry-heaved twice in his office and couldn’t manage to get myself under control. He had to come downstairs to visit me about twenty minutes later, and I still gagged while he was mid-explanation about his feelings on an ad campaign. It’s not appropriate office etiquette, in my opinion.” She pauses to cross her arms over her abdomen. “Drinking raw eggs, I mean. There are just certain things you shouldn’t eat at the office. Raw eggs, stinky fish, any kind of cabbage, cheesy poofs…”

  Annie giggles, and I find it impossible not to laugh myself.

  “What’s your story?” Maddie asks me, helping herself to another cookie. “These are dangerous. I’ll have to run an extra mile today, and you’re to blame.”

  “Thanks, I think.” After adjusting myself awkwardly on the couch, I clear my throat. “Well, my daughter and I moved here a few months ago from Tennessee. Bailey—that’s my daughter’s name—is four years old. It’s my first year teaching high school algebra. I suppose that pretty much sums everything up.”

  “I call foul,” Maddie immediately states. “Sorry, I don’t know where that came from. I guess I’ve been hanging out with Josh too much lately and I’ve picked up some of his lingo.”

  “Well, if you’re going to call foul you have to state your reason clearly,” Annie retorts, her smile telling me that she’s clearly amused by Maddie’s outburst.

  “She’s leaving out a big part of the story,” Maddie continues, glancing at me rather apologetically. “I saw the good looking guy helping you move in. Josh’s mom and I were getting in the car that night. Sorry, I shouldn’t have even brought it up.”

  “No, it’s okay.” Really, it’s more uncomfortable than okay, but what am I supposed to say? “You’re talking about Jake. He’s Bailey’s dad.”

  “Jake’s a pretty cool guy,” Annie adds. “He’s been doing the remodeling for Harley.”

  “So you two are…” Maddie frames her drop-off statement as a question pointed at me, and I feel my eyes widen involuntarily.

  “Nothing,” I blurt, rethinking the word the instant it crosses my lips. “Friends, I guess. He spends a lot of time at the house. But it’s not like that. Last night he gave me a brotherly lecture about who I should date.”

  “Yikes.” Annie rises from the beanbag, which makes a swooshing noise at her exit. She grabs three cookies before fluffing the beanbag so she can sit cross-legged atop it again. “He doesn’t like who you’re planning to date?”

  “Planning to date,” I reply with a laugh. “I’m not planning to date. He seems to think I’m kind of old-fashion
ed. A prude, quite frankly. Anyway, I don’t exactly have a line of guys waiting for the chance, so the point is moot.”

  The whole room falls silent, like I’ve sucked the very life from it. Rather than sit here watching them feel sorry for me, I reach out to grab a cookie for myself.

  “We should find Alexis a man,” Annie announces.

  “How fun,” Maddie agrees.

  “Annie too,” Harley adds. “She needs some kind of distraction so she’ll stop bugging me.”

  “I never bug anyone. Besides, I may possibly be seeing someone. Just once now so I don’t want to jinx it, but we are going out again tonight.”

  “Annie!” Harley pulls her feet up to the couch, her gigantic navy blue wool socks coming to rest close to my leg. “I can’t believe you went out with someone and didn’t tell me.”

  “You were busy with Ryan’s family. Anyway, it’s no big deal. On to Alexis, though. Who are we thinking?”

  Harley draws her eyes away from Annie so slowly, I’m fairly certain the two of them will have a conversation about this later.

  “I could probably come up with some good names if I put some thought into it,” Maddie says. “Maybe look through the employee listing at work.”

  “What about Denton?” Harley adds. “You’ve probably seen him on the Channel Six news…Denton Price? He’s quite the catch, and a nice guy to boot.”

  “Denton’s probably not the guy for her,” Annie counters.

  Harley furrows her brow as she returns her eyes to Annie. “Why not? What’s wrong with Denton?”

  “I just have it on good authority that he’s already seeing someone.”

  “Good authority? How do you know more about Denton than I do? I see the guy every day.” Harley leans her head back against the sofa and lets her feet slide back to the floor. “Wait a second—you and Denton? Annie?”

  Annie’s mouth twitches a little as she stares at Harley. “Don’t make a thing of it. We got to talking last week when he called for you, and then he asked me to go to dinner with him. It might amount to nothing, and I don’t want things to be awkward, okay?”

  “Okay,” Harley adds quietly. “How can my best friend date my coworker and not bother to tell me? No matter, let’s move on. Alexis?”

  “I think I liked it better when we were focusing on Annie,” I can’t help saying. “I’m really not looking to date anyone right now, so it’s all good.”

  “How disappointing,” Maddie states as she sighs loudly.

  “Listen, why don’t we devote our time to something more noble than our love lives?” Annie suggests. “No offense, Alexis.”

  “None taken.”

  “I’m all for noble.” Maddie adjusts her voluminous auburn hair over her shoulder. “We’ve got a full crew, too. The perfect opportunity to get something done if we put our minds to it.”

  “What do you mean, a full crew?” Harley adjusts her own hair in its topknot, almost as though Maddie’s action was contagious.

  “I’m in marketing, Alexis is the numbers lady, you’re the one who gets us into the right circles, and Annie can dress us to the nines. We can’t possibly lose.”

  “She sounds like she’s plotting a crime,” Annie deadpans from her slowly sinking beanbag. She’s now sitting about two inches lower on the right side.

  “No, I get what she’s saying,” Harley says, looking at me like she’s searching for agreement. “We could form a group and do cool things, like volunteer at the homeless shelter.”

  “Sure,” Maddie adds. “And when we’re not helping people, we could do something between ourselves. Just meet and chat and have coffee and snacks. Oh, like one of those book clubs! Except I don’t like coffee, and I don’t really read.”

  I’m the first to giggle, but I attempt to stifle it by placing my hand over my mouth. It’s no use, because the laughter is contagious and Annie and Harley join in almost immediately.

  “I’ve been really busy,” Maddie attempts to explain. “It’s not like I’m illiterate or something. Come to think of it, I did read three Camdyn Taylor books over the winter, but that was before Josh was back.”

  “Camdyn Taylor,” Harley says with a sigh. “I can only imagine what that woman thinks of me after I tried to go undercover in her dressing room.”

  “That’s so funny.” I relax a bit, allowing myself to ease into the conversation. “Did you know she’s married to Jake’s best friend?”

  “He’s very attractive,” Maddie states. The rest of us look in her direction, and she shrugs as she grabs another cookie. “What? It’s a fact.”

  Harley nods in my direction, and we share a conspiratorial grin. I remember well running into him at the drug store. Attractive is an apt description.

  “Ladies, before the chair eats me alive, I propose a toast.” Annie pushes forward from her beanbag once more, and the motion deposits her on the hardwood on her knees.

  Maddie narrows her eyes as she focuses her gaze at Annie on the floor. “We don’t have glasses.”

  “We have cookies,” Annie counters.

  “I think I’ve already had six.”

  Maddie’s words cause me to laugh again, but Annie clears her throat and reaches out for a cookie off the tray.

  “A toast, then,” Annie begins, causing the rest of us to reach forward and grab our own cookies to hold aloft. “May our doors ever be open to one another as long as we all shall live.”

  “Or at least while we’re all on Wonder Lane,” Maddie adds.

  That sentiment causes Harley to smile. “To the girls of Wonder Lane.”

  “The girls of Wonder Lane,” we echo, tapping our cookies together in midair.

  The four of us chat and laugh for nearly three hours before I decide I should probably go. When I walk back up the street, I feel almost foolish for dreading the visit earlier. For better or for worse, I’m pretty sure I now have a unique group of friends I can call on when I need something. Since I started the morning with no one to rely on here except Jake, that matters more than it normally would.

  The red truck isn’t in the driveway when I get back to the house, so it seems like this would be a good time to pick up some milk and bread from the grocery store. Of course milk and bread never wind up being the only purchases, so while I’m in the store I wind up spending a bit too much time staring at a display of lip gloss. Once I’ve been standing in that spot long enough to have one of the stockers ask me if I need help—twice—I pick the tubes of gloss up one by one and hold them against my wrist.

  Thinking about dating someone new shouldn’t be so terrifying, should it? The girls convinced me that I could take some small steps into the fray and get myself out there, and it sounded great while we were together in our group of empowerment, but now that I’m standing in front of the lip gloss rack…

  It doesn’t help that the stocker looks like a teenager and seems way more self-confident than I am at the moment.

  While I’m talking to the cashier and mentally chiding myself for spending money on two tubes of lip gloss and a concealer stick (solely picked up for the way I looked in my rearview mirror earlier), Jake calls. Wants to make sure I’m not out somewhere looking for the two of them. Just checking in, he insists. Take my time, and he’ll keep watching Bailey as long as I need him to.

  Perhaps irrationally, it instantly makes me feel like a bad mother. Jake is watching my daughter, and I’m plotting ways to make myself attractive to the opposite sex.

  That’s my mindset as I pull the Mitsubishi out of the grocery store parking lot, and it keeps tugging at the back of my subconscious while I speed down the street and eventually hit I-65. The thought refuses to relent, right up until the point where I hear the wailing sound behind me and look up to see the flashing lights in my mirror.

  Never pull over by yourself on a secluded highway.

  Keep your hands where they can be seen.

  Be honest and forthright, and show respect.

  My heart beats erratically as I sit in the
driver’s seat of the car, seat belt rather constrictive against my chest, willing my breathing to calm down as I wait for the officer. Why my dad’s words are ringing through my brain is a mystery. It was the lecture he gave when I turned sixteen and got my license—the same lecture he gave Heather a year later. That advice has never come in handy for me before now.

  I roll my window down as a car zips by me on the left, a little too close for comfort, and I pray no one I know from school sees me. My concern quickly shifts, however, when I see the gray uniform coming toward me in the side mirror.

  “Good afternoon,” the baritone voice says at the window.

  I can’t even muster up the nerve to look at him. “I guess you want my license and registration? Should I get them now?”

  “Do you know why I pulled you over today?”

  Because I thought I could buy lip gloss, that’s why. Slowly I reach toward the glove box and lift the handle, making the move to retrieve my documentation.

  “Yes, sir. I was speeding, and I’m sorry. Too much on my mind.”

  He takes the information from my hand and tells me he’ll be a moment, and then leaves me with the misery of knowing I’m going to have to pay for a ticket now. That lip gloss didn’t look quite as expensive just a couple moments ago.

  In all my dad’s advice, he never mentioned the fact that the minutes seem to turn into hours as the car sits on the side of the highway, the flashing lights like a beacon to every passing vehicle. Look at the rule-breaker. And they each gawk at me in turn as they drive by, witnessing my humiliation.

  The sound of a car door closing behind me causes me to glance at my side mirror again, and I avert my eyes as I see him approaching. He clears his throat when he reaches the door, and I turn but keep my focus on his hands holding my driver’s license.

  “I’m not quite sure what to do with you, young lady. I’m a little surprised to see you.”

  That phrase causes me to raise my eyes a bit, and they travel up his trim midsection to his chest and rest on his last name. HEWITT.