The Ugly Truth (21 page)

It took some doing to get Maddie up and into the chair. Tying her in took everything we had. At one point, a stiletto flew by my head, barely missing. “Watch out,” I said. “She’s still got her high heels on.”

Margaret grabbed one shoe and then the other, giving her daughter an I-dare-you look as she did. Behind Maddie, Steve was tying her arms. Liza had slapped a piece of duct tape across Maddie’s #6 Sun Kissed Peach lipsticked mouth. From behind the tape came words I’d never heard Maddie say. This better work, or I was in really deep do-do.

It was then I realized everybody had stepped back and were looking at me. It was time.

I bravely, or maybe foolishly, stood between the kidnapped adversaries. “I know you’re both pretty angry right now, and I don’t blame you. I’m not totally clear about what happened ten years ago, and what the fire had to do with why you two seem to want to kill each other. The one thing I am sure of is what you feel isn’t hate, it’s caring. From what I’ve seen, your biggest problem is neither of you will come within twenty feet of the other. How can you work out your problems if you won’t talk?”

I took a deep breath and ignored four eyes shooting resentment and fury my way. “Now you
have
to talk. You don’t have a choice. We’re going to leave you alone and let you work it out.” I pulled the duct tape off their mouths and turned to leave.

For a moment it was quiet, too quiet. At the door I turned back to see Maddie and Jake glaring hard at each other. I took a long, deep breath and prayed I was doing the right thing.

I closed the door behind me and walked over to where the rest of the kidnapping cohorts were gazing anxiously toward the back room door. “It’ll work,” I told them, though I was not at all sure it would.

We trooped over to the nearest living room display and sat waiting. My stomach was doing gold medal gymnastics and my throat was so dry I don’t think water was wet enough to help. And still it was quiet.

Liza crossed one chiffon covered leg over the other, then reversed them. After a couple more of the shifts, she gave up, took off her heels, and pulled her legs underneath her.

I sighed. This was not what I’d pictured when my demented brain came up with this cockamamie plan.

It started as the muffled sound of voices. I held my breath for a moment, then let out a long, relieved sigh. It was in the middle of that sigh that the yelling started. Loud, harsh, and even through the closed door I could make out the dirty words.
Oh crap.

“They have a lot to get out of their systems,” Henry said.

“Ten years’ worth,” Liza added.

So we sat and sat and waited, and waited and sat.

The bell over the front door dinged and Henry stood. “Better go see about the customer.”

I figured he wanted to make sure they stayed away from the back of the store. Good plan, because the yelling was getting louder. My throat was getting raw just listening to them.

There was a crash and we all jumped to our feet. Before we could get anywhere, the back room door swung open with a force that should have taken the hinges off, and Madison stood glaring us down with wide, wild eyes, like the magic-addicted Willow in that Buffy show. Yeah, okay, I watched a few episodes. So sue me.

“I can’t believe you did this to me. All of you. My friends. My
mother
! What the hell did you think you were doing?”

“We were trying to help,” I said.

“Like when you kissed Jake earlier? I’d hate for my feelings to stand in the way of your new romance.” The expression on her face was half angry and half wounded. It tore at me, and I knew for sure I’d be looking for a new roommate.

And a new friend.

She spread her hostility over the group one last time before she stomped out the door.

Liza sat down and let her head sag back onto the couch. “She’s going to kill us.”

“Probably,” Steve said.

“I’m going after her.” Margaret took off out the door.

I felt the hair at the back of my head stand up, and I turned to find Jake glaring me down. “I told you to stay out of this.”

“I’m sorry,” I croaked.

“Yeah, yeah.” He stomped out the door.

“I’m going to try to talk some sense into him,” Steve said.

“You’re a brave man, my husband,” Liza said. “Go with God.”

Steve rolled his eyes and headed out the door.

I dropped into the nearest chair. Disaster. Total, complete, call-the-governor disaster, that’s what I’d caused. Just call me Hurricane Stephie.

“I hate to do this to you,” Liza said, “but I really need to get home. We’ve got family coming over later. You know how it is.”

Not a clue.
“Yeah, pretty stressful.”

She leaned her head back and sighed thoroughly. “Ain’t that the truth.”

My gaze moved toward the front door where two people I cared for deeply had walked out of my life. Probably for good.

“It could still work, you know.”

I turned to her, sure I’d heard wrong. “How?”

“They finally talked. Yeah, it was more yelling than talking, but still they communicated. It’s going to be harder to ignore each other from now on.”

“But Maddie’s going back to D.C. in a couple of days.” And I’d be looking for a new place to live.

“It’s the twenty-first century. Cell phones, email, texting, smoke signals. Plus it’s not
that
far down here. It’s not like Ugly Creek is on a different plane of existence or something.” Liza stood and grabbed her duffle bag from where she’d stashed it. “It’ll work out because Maddie and Jake love each other. Need a ride back to Margaret’s house?”

All the life dropped out of me. I was still moving around, but I felt dead inside.

A voice that sounded like mine said, “I don’t have a key.”

She held up the duffle bag Madison had tossed earlier. “I have Maddie’s.”

We headed out, the bouncy ex-cheerleader and the zombie.

Chapter 15

Three hours later, I was sitting at Margaret’s kitchen table, cup of tea in my hand, wondering if I should be packing up and getting out while I still could. Before the person I’d tried to help decided to go all Slayer Buffy on me. Then again, Maddie was my friend. My closest friend. I couldn’t just leave her here after the mess I’d made.

The sound of a car pulling in the driveway told me the time for cowardly retreat was past. I’d have to face up to my mistake. I stood and edged around so I could see the front door without being seen.

Maddie blew in and stomped up the stairs. Margaret followed her into the house, her shoulders drooped, her eyes were red, gloom radiated from every cell of her body.

“Are you okay?”

She looked at me, startled. “Stephie. I’m glad you got home all right. I was worried.”

“Liza gave me a ride, and she had Maddie’s key, I hope that’s all right.”

The smile was small and shaky. “Of course it is. I should have given you your own key.”

I went over to her, my hand going without thought to her arm. “I’m so sorry about all this.”

This time her smile was genuine. “You didn’t do anything wrong, sweetie. You tried to help.”

“And failed miserably.”

She brushed an unruly curl off my cheek. “You did what the rest of us have tried and failed at for ten years. You got them talking. Now it’s up to them.”

Almost the same thing Liza had said. Nice people, these Ugly Creek folks.

Margaret and I walked toward the kitchen. “I made a cup of tea, I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not.” She turned the water on to reheat. “Nothing better after a stressful day than a nice cup of tea.”

“They really care about each other, don’t they?”

“Maddie and Jake? They always did. They were inseparable from the time they were in diapers until ten years ago. They’re a good match for each other because they’re both so stubborn. But right now stubbornness is what’s keeping them apart.”

My heart wasn’t just breaking; it was slowly tearing into confetti. Jake and Maddie. Maddie and Jake. I felt like dropping my head onto the table and crying my eyes out.

Margaret had just poured her tea when a knock at the front door caught her attention. She headed that way and I edged so I could see. The silly romantic girl inside me dreamed it was Jake come to take me away from all this.

The rest of me wondered, what now?

Henry was on the other side of the door. He pulled Margaret into a kiss, and I went back to my tea. I heard something about Steve and Jake coming to blows, and I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out.

They came into the kitchen and I managed a smile for Henry. “Thanks for your help,” I told him.

“You’re very welcome.” He grinned. “I haven’t had so much excitement since my Uncle Bartholomew threw his back out at one of those lady-of-ill-repute houses. My cousin and I had to go over there and get him out, and it was, shall we say, interesting.”

Margaret got him a cup of tea and we all sat at the table. Soon they were engaged in their own conversation and I excused myself and went out onto the screened-in back porch. I loved it out there, where the scorching July heat was brought under control by big trees and a gentle breeze. I could live out there, I decided.

I sat for hours, contemplating how I’d done something so bad to my brother that he’d actually run from me. And now I’d managed to screw up my relationship with my best friend and a man I was feeling pretty strongly about. Not to mention, an unsavory scum was trying, clumsily, to find something in my background distasteful enough to suit his yuckiness. Boy had I screwed up. What a doofus I was.

I saw movement in the growing darkness, and I leaned forward in my seat to see more clearly. It was him, the little furry Bigfoot critter, well, little compared to the other one I’d seen. I smiled and waved, and to my surprise, he waved back.

For a moment it seemed as though he was edging toward the porch, then all at once he turned and scurried back toward the woods.

I sat until almost midnight, waiting for any sign of the cute little creature. There was nothing though, and finally I headed back into the house.

Henry and Margaret were sitting on the living room couch, heads leaned back, and I could hear soft snoring coming from their direction. I smiled, hot date for the middle aged set.

But then, they were no doubt worn out from the events of the day.

Events of my making.

I tiptoed upstairs into the dark bedroom, quietly slipped into my nightshirt, and crawled into bed.

It was hours before I could let go of the guilt enough to sleep.

****

The sound of my cell phone jarred me awake. I groped on the nightstand until I realized I’d left my phone in my purse. I considered getting out of bed to find the thing, but when the annoying sound abruptly stopped, I lay back down and the soft, warm arms of sleep pulled me close.

The phone started up again.

“Answer the damn thing already,” Maddie’s slurred voice said.

I slid to the foot of the bed, and used my hand to brace myself so I didn’t take a header against the softly carpeted floor. I grabbed my purse and shoved myself back on the bed to dig out the phone. By this time the ringing had stopped again and restarted. “Hi,” I managed.

“What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?”

I pulled the phone back and stared at it. “Mr. Grainger?”

“Who the hell were you expecting? You’re lucky it’s me and not our lawyer.”

This had to be a bad dream. It just had to be. Nothing else made any sense. I pinched myself, and it hurt. Sunshine was pouring in the window. Okay, now I was totally confused.

“Well, Stephanova, what do you have to say for yourself?”

This had to be a dream. A nightmare. “I’m sorry, Mr. Grainger, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do understand you’re fired. You signed an exclusivity contract with us.
The Weekly Tattler
isn’t exactly a competitor, but its national distribution puts you in violation of your contract. If it were up to me, I’d fire you for stupidity. I expected better from you. Get your things out of here ASAP.” The line went dead.

I sat staring at the phone and wondering what in the world had just happened. Nothing my boss had said made sense. Had he called the wrong person to chew out? No, not Mr. Grainger. Besides, he’d called me by name. What in the world had I done? I’d been here, in Ugly Creek, how could I have managed to get myself in this much trouble? It had to be a mistake, it just had to be. I headed toward the bathroom. Maybe a gallon of cold water on my face would wake me up—or at least help me figure out what had happened to my world.

The first thing I heard when I stepped back into the bedroom was Maddie’s voice. “Thanks for letting me know, Greg.”

I walked carefully back toward my bed, wondering when the next wave of weirdness would hit. I didn’t have to wait long.

“How could you? I thought I knew you, but you betrayed my trust. That was bad enough, but to betray the entire Ugly Creek community is beyond loathsome.”

I stared at her. What was going on here? I shook my head to clear it. Maybe I’d been drugged, or I was in the middle of an especially tenacious dream. I pinched my arm again, but the pain didn’t pull me out of the Twilight Zone.

“What do you think I did?”

Maddie didn’t answer she just glowered harder than I’d ever thought she could.

“Tell me. What do you think I did?”

She didn’t blink. “Don’t play games with me, Buffy. I may be from a small town, but I’m not stupid.”

Tears filled my eyes, and my throat closed so tightly I could barely speak. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Maddie climbed out of bed and grabbed some clothes. “I’m going to get dressed.”

She glared hard at me as she walked out of the room. Alone, I contemplated the scattered pieces of my heart.

I grabbed the only pair of jeans and T-shirt I’d brought and pulled them on with shaking hands. The cool air from the central system chilled me almost as much as the confrontation with Maddie had. I pulled on a light sweater and sat on the edge of the bed.