Josie Day Is Coming Home (7 page)

“No. I’m still moving in. But—”

“Next.” Permed Lady gestured for the customer in
line behind Josie to step forward. “How’re you doing today, Trudy?”

“Pretty good. Is that old Xerox in the corner
free?”

“Sure, it is. Just go on and—”

“I’m sorry,” Josie murmured to the customer.
“But I wasn’t finished yet.” She elbowed her way forward and held out
her flyer, which advertised her new dance school. If living in Vegas had taught
her anything, it was that demand could never start being generated too soon.
“How about twenty-five copies? That’s all. Just a measly twenty-five.
Please?”

“Look.” The clerk frowned. “You
out-of-towners come up here, putting up your posters and your new subdivision
signs and whatnot all over the place, and then the city council gets all pissy
with
me
because of the litter! I’ve had it. No copies.” She glanced
sideways. “Sure, Trudy. Go right ahead and use that Xerox.”

Josie watched, frustrated, as the other customer trundled
off to the beat-up copier.

“Is there another copy shop in town?”

“No.” The clerk seemed to try to hide it, but a
smug smile spread across her face anyway. “Looks like you’re out of luck.
Maybe you’d better go on back to Las Vegas.”

Confused, Josie angled her head. “But I never told you
I was from—”

“Oh, I remember you, Josie Day,” Permed Lady
interrupted. “We
all
do. We know what you’ve been up to, too.”
She leaned sideways and waved another customer forward. “Next!”

Two more customers pushed to the counter, crowding Josie out
of the way. Flummoxed, she edged sideways. She wasn’t sure what to do. If she
didn’t get her copies, she couldn’t advertise, but….

Several more smirks followed her. Two elderly women
whispered and pointed. Suddenly, Josie didn’t care quite so much about
generating dance school demand. Not today.

Clutching her flyer, she bolted for the door. If she’d ever
needed a jazzy showgirl walk to help her hold her head high, it was now. But
she couldn’t quite manage it. Not when her so-called triumphant homecoming was
turning out to be so much harder than she’d expected.

It got worse.

Strolling down the cracked sidewalk bordering Main Street,
Josie wrinkled her nose at the exhaust billowing from the pickup trucks
putt-putting past. She took stock of Donovan’s Corner.

She noticed which shops were new, which were renovated, and
which were the same old fabric store, convenience mart, and single-plex movie
theater she’d grown up with. She breezed past the chamber of commerce. She
dodged retirees out for their daily dose of fresh air. She pinpointed several
good locations for putting up her (future) dance-school flyers, since—as Josie
told herself firmly—there was no way that woman at Copies 2 Go was going to
keep her down for long.

Then disaster struck.

“Josie? Is that you?”

Spinning, she confronted the owner of that voice.

Her sister.

“I
thought
that was you!” Jenna said, eyes
wide with surprise. Holding a toddler in one arm and a bulging purse in the
other, she looked exactly like what she was—a small-town wife and mother of
two. “What are you doing in town?”

Awkwardly, Josie hugged her. “Just…a visit.”

Jenna gave a disbelieving sound. “You haven’t visited
Donovan’s Corner since you hotfooted it for Vegas. Come on. What’s
really
going on?”

Well, I inherited a mansion. Sort of
.

No. Josie couldn’t tell her that. Not yet. Telling Jenna the
truth would lead to the showgirl discussion, the saving-Tallulah discussion,
and the April Fool’s Day gullibility discussion. Then, as sisters, they’d be
forced to segue into the dance-school impossibility lecture, the copy-shop
scandal disclosure, and the general “why don’t you grow up?”
analysis.

Josie wasn’t up for all that. Not when her elder
sister—who’d always done
everything
right—was standing there in her
nonscandalous blue jeans and oversize polo shirt, with her angelic little girl
and (probably) a sensible purse full of sensible grocery coupons and a sensible
shopping list. Full of healthy vegetables and prune juice.

Nobody was telling Jenna she couldn’t use the Xerox
machines. Nobody was whispering and pointing and frowning at her. Josie would
be willing to bet nobody ever had.

So what was
really
going on?

Diversion. That’s what was going on.

“Hey! Is this really little Emily? I don’t believe how
big she’s gotten!” Smiling, Josie leaned toward the strawberry blond
toddler. She honestly was adorable, dressed in pint-size overalls and a tiny
flower-print T-shirt. “The last time I saw you,” she cooed, “you
were just a baby. And your big sister was about your size.” She looked
around. “Where’s Hannah, anyway?”

Silence.

Uh-oh. Josie glanced up, temporarily abandoning her quest to
capture her niece’s flailing, chubby little hand in hers. It was just as she’d
feared. Jenna stared at her as though she could see right inside her head—and
knew perfectly well this whole conversation was a detour from the deadly
“visiting Donovan’s Corner” discussion.

But then she hitched Emily higher on her hip and, to Josie’s
relief, answered.

“Hannah’s in kindergarten now. I just dropped her off
at school.”

“
Kindergarten
? Wow! I can’t believe it.”
Kindergarten was one thing Josie had fond memories of. In kindergarten, no one
had expected her to settle down, stay in her seat, or pay too much attention to
things like good behavior. “Time really flies. That means Hannah must be,
what, five now?”

Another silence.

Josie could feel something building between them. Something
expectant. Something she wanted to avoid.

“Cute shoes,” she blurted. Another bid for
diversion.

Jenna wasn’t buying it. She didn’t so much as glance at her
scuffed sneakers.

“Are you going to go see Mom and Dad?” she asked.

Yup, that was it. The thing Josie wanted to avoid.

So much for diversion.

“Well, I just got here. I mean, literally. This
morning. I haven’t had a chance to do much.”
Besides go ga-ga over my
gorgeous handyman, lug half a dozen boxes into my new tumbledown mansion, and
launch a dance school scheme
. “So far.”

 “Mmmm-hmmm.” With practiced ease, Jenna tugged a
grubby stuffed monkey from the depths of her purse. One-handed, she offered it
to fussy Emily. Then she gave Josie her patented
I’m older, listen to me
look. “Mark my words. You might as well just get it over with. By the time
the five o’clock news airs tonight, the whole town will know you’re back anyway.”

“I seriously doubt I’ll make the news.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

Josie wished she didn’t. Adopting her most persuasive tone,
she tried again. “You know, it would keep me
out
of the news if you
didn’t mention that you saw me.”

Jenna rolled her eyes. Right. Josie had been crazy to expect
any kind of deviant behavior from her saintly sister. Even for solidarity’s
sake.

With a sigh that suggested longstanding tolerance, Jenna
held her ground. “You’re going to have to see them sometime.”

“Okay, fine.” Josie looked away, pretending to be
absorbed in the snail’s-pace traffic down Main Street. “I’ll stop by Mom’s
office.”

“And Dad?”

“Dad? He’s doing pretty well with that whole ‘I’ve only
got one daughter’ thing.” Josie shrugged, offering up a feeble grin.
“I’d hate to break his winning streak.”

“Josie—”

“No, don’t worry about it. I’m fine.” Feeling
anything but, she looked around for an excuse to get away. “Anyway, I’ve
got to run. I was just on my way…here.” She pointed.

Jenna arched an unplucked eyebrow. “Donovan’s Corner
Utilities?”

Josie nodded. “Yup. But it was great seeing you! Say
‘hi!’ to David for me, okay?” Jenna’s husband, a plumber, was as flawless
as Jenna was. “Bye! Bye, Emily!”

The little girl squeezed her fist in an awkward learner’s
version of a wave. The gesture pricked Josie right where it hurt most—her
heart. She wished she’d seen Emily and Hannah more over the past few years. But
with things so complicated….

“Later,” she said, then ducked into the refuge of
the town’s combined electric, gas, water, and phone company. As long as she was
hiding out, she figured she’d might as well get something useful
accomplished—like having the utilities at Blue Moon transferred to her own
name.

Not that going all sensible was a reaction to seeing Jenna
or anything, Josie assured herself as she approached the customer service
counter. Her perfect sister didn’t have a thing to do with it. She just wanted
to make sure she’d have hot water later. For a shower. Or a bubble bath. Or a
Cup O’ Noodles for dinner. That was all.

Waiting in line, Josie stared at the utility company’s
public service advertising. A poster about cost per kilowatt hours hung to her
left. Another explaining low-flow showerheads was tacked up beside it. She
tried to lose herself in the dancing water drop mascot pictured on the poster,
but it was no use. The same old question kept poking at her.

Are you going to go see Mom and Dad
?

The truth was, Josie didn’t know. If she was going to live
in the same town with them, maybe she might as well…. No. For now, the answer
was no. If her parents found out she was here in Donovan’s Corner, they could
track her down themselves. If they didn’t….

Well, if they didn’t, at least then Josie would know where
she stood. Once and for all.

The old-timers were the first to notice.

In retrospect, Luke should have expected that. But he
hadn’t. He’d been too busy forking up his last bite of Frank’s famous cherry
pie when the hubbub started. By the time it spread to his rear-corner booth, it
was a full-on scandal—and all the retirees at Frank’s had front row seats.

“You ever seen hair like that?” one of them asked.

“No, sireee. ‘Cept in a movie.”

“Me, neither.”

“Desiree probably did it down at the salon,” Byron
Hill, Desiree’s husband, volunteered. “She’s always cooking up something
crazy for them gals. Says it’s ‘hair art.’”

Skeptical chortles followed. Then nodding and murmuring took
over. Whatever they were looking at, it had them transfixed. Swallowing his
last bite, Luke gave in to idle curiosity. He squinted toward the diner’s big
plate glass window. He couldn’t see a thing past the clump of gray-haired male
retirees congregated in their usual booths.

“That hair
can’t
be real,” one of them
said, pointing outside. “Not with a color like that.”

Luke only knew one woman with unbelievable hair color. A
weird prickling sensation whooshed through him. He told himself it was probably
just a surge of impatience to be done with waiting for that one particular
woman to give up on Blue Moon. He motioned for his check.

“Whoo-whee! Is that one of those belly button shirts?
I’ve seen ‘em on the Jerry Springer show, but—”

“Not lookin’ like that, you haven’t.”

A moment of silence. Then more murmuring.

“Damn,” old man McKee said, mopping his brow with
a napkin.

Luke consulted his scrawled-out guest check, then dropped a
five dollar bill on the table. Enough with the mystery. Nothing ever happened
in Donovan’s Corner. If he knew the locals, they’d probably spotted Marianne
Wilson on her recumbent bike. Any deviation from the norm passed for scandal
around here. He slurped the rest of his coffee in a single gulp.

“Well, belly button shirt or not, it can’t beat those
shoes.” One of the retirees chuckled. “Those are the damndest things
I’ve ever seen. How do you think she stays upright?”

“Ballast,” another retiree said knowledgably.
“Plenty of ballast.”

A hushed appreciation of feminine “ballast”
followed.

Luke, being male, deigned another look outside. He was as
big a fan of “ballast” as the next guy. And he had a sneaking
suspicion….

“Will ya’ look at the way she walks?” Byron
sounded awed. “Just like Marilyn Monroe.”

“Yeah,” breathed another retiree. “Or Jayne
Mansfield.”

“Quit yer gawking, you old coot.” Luanne, the
waitress, whapped Byron upside the head. “You’ve got a wife at home. Or
did you forget?”

“No. Sheesh.” Byron rubbed the back of his head.

The rest of the men looked away for a minute, wearing
sheepish expressions. Then McKee pointed outside.

“Hey, she’s comin’ this way!” he yelled.
“Duck!”

Eight men scrambled for the closest booths. Two grabbed
menus and buried their noses in them. Another waved his coffee cup at Luanne
for a decoy refill.

The waitress gave him a withering look.

Luke grinned. If you wanted good service at Frank’s Diner,
it was a bad idea to ogle anybody but Luanne.

“Holy smokes!” one of the retirees said, staring
outside again. “I know her. That’s little Josie Day. Warren and Nancy’s
girl.”

“Jenna?”

“No. The
other
one.”

A shocked silence fell over the retirees.

Then, “The one who ran off to Las Vegas.”

At that, even the local women in the nearby booths perked up
their ears. Several bouffant-haired heads swiveled toward the diner’s front
door. Luke felt a strange energy in the air, an almost palpable curiosity. This
was exactly what he’d meant about people in Donovan’s Corner. It didn’t take
much to stir them up.

The bell over the diner’s front door jangled. Josie stepped
inside.

Her pink outfit and rainbow shoes were the same ones from
this morning. Both looked twice as colorful as anything in the diner. In them,
she reminded Luke of a Technicolor starlet in a black and white movie. The
whole place sort of…faded to gray around her. She was all he could see.