As the driver pulled away, Dean tucked his thumbs in his back pockets and circled the wagon as if it were a new car. She didn’t wait for him but pulled down a hinged step and climbed up to open the door.
The dark red interior was as magical as the exterior. Every surface, from the beams curving across the bowed ceiling, to the wooden ribs on the walls, to the panels between the ribs, had been painted with the same dancing unicorns, wandering vines, and fanciful flowers as the exterior. Across the rear of the wagon, a silky curtain trimmed in loopy fringe had been swagged at one side, revealing a bed that reminded Blue of a ship’s berth. Another bed formed a top bunk along the left side, with a painted double-door cupboard beneath. Small pieces of furniture had been upended for transport and wrapped in brown paper.
The wagon had two miniature windows, one in the center of the side wall above the table, and another over the rear bed. Both had white lace doll’s-house curtains drawn back with loops of purple braid. Near the baseboard on one side, a painted brown rabbit munched a tasty tuft of clover. It was so cozy, so absolutely perfect, that Blue wanted to cry. If she hadn’t forgotten how, she might have.
Dean came in behind her and gazed around. “Unbelievable.”
“This must have cost you a fortune.”
“She got a deal.”
No question who she was.
Only the center of the wagon rose high enough for him to stand upright. He started unwrapping the protective paper from a wooden table. “There’s a guy in Nashville who specializes in restoring these caravans. That’s what they call them. Some record mogul backed out of the deal after he’d ordered it.”
Caravan. She liked the word. It hinted of the exotic. “How did April talk you into buying it?”
“She told me it would be a good place to stick drunken guests. Also, some of my friends have kids, and I thought it would be fun for them.”
“Plus, you decided it would be a cool thing to own. The only gypsy caravan in the neighborhood and all that.”
He didn’t deny it.
She ran her hand over the walls. “A lot of this has been stenciled, but there’s some handwork. It’s a good job.”
He began poking around, opening the cupboard, pulling out the built-in drawers, and investigated a wrought-iron wall sconce shaped like a seahorse. “These are wired for electricity, so I’ll need to get some power out here. I’d better talk to the electrician.”
Blue wasn’t ready to leave, but he held the door open for her, so she followed him out into the yard. The electrician squatted in front of a junction box, the radio at his side playing an old Five for Fighting song. April stood a few feet away, holding a notebook and studying the concrete slab jutting from the rear of the house. Dean still hadn’t mentioned anything today about her leaving. The Five for Fighting song came to an end and segued into the opening chords of “Farewell, So Long,” one of Jack Patriot’s ballads. Dean’s gait faltered, the change of rhythm so slight Blue doubted she would have noticed if April’s head hadn’t come up at the same time. She snapped the notebook closed. “Turn it down, Pete.”
The electrician glanced over at her but didn’t immediately move.
“Never mind.” April tucked her notebook under her arm and headed inside. At the same time, Dean set off for the front yard, his mission to talk to the electrician abandoned.
Blue poked around the overgrown garden. Instead of figuring out how she’d get into town so she could look for a job, she thought over what she’d just witnessed. “Farewell, So Long” came to an end, and the Moffatt Sisters’ “Gilded Lives” began to play. Even some of the adult contemporary stations had been playing a few of the Moffatts’ country hits since Marli’s death, generally pairing the songs with Jack Patriot’s “Farewell, So Long,” which Blue found a little crass, since they’d been divorced for years. She turned it all over in her mind as she headed inside.
Three men speaking a language she didn’t understand were in the kitchen installing charcoal soapstone countertops. April sat in the dining nook, frowning at a notebook page. “You’re an artist,” she said as Blue came in. “Help me with this. I’m great with clothes, but not as good drawing architectural details, especially when I’m not sure what I want.”
Blue had been hoping to snag another doughnut, but the box held only a dusting of confectioners’ sugar and a couple of jelly stains.
“It’s the screen porch,” April said.
Blue sat next to her and took in the drawing on the notebook page. As the men chattered in the background, April explained what she envisioned. “I don’t want this porch looking like it belongs on a broken-down fishing cabin. I see big sunburst windows set above the screening to let in plenty of light and moldings to break up all the height, but I’m not sure what kind.”
Blue thought it over and began sketching some simple trims.
“I like that one,” April said. “Can you draw the end wall for me? With the windows?”
Blue sketched each wall as April described it. They made some adjustments and came up with a more balanced arrangement. “You’re good at this,” April said when the workers headed outside for a cigarette break. “Would you mind doing some interior sketches for me? But maybe I’m assuming too much. I’m not exactly sure how long you’re staying or what your relationship is with Dean.”
“Blue and I are engaged,” Dean said from the doorway.
Neither of them had heard him approach. He set his empty coffee mug by the stove and walked over to pick up Blue’s sketch. “She’ll be staying as long as I’m here.”
“Engaged?” April said.
He didn’t look up from the sketch. “That’s right.”
Blue could barely resist rolling her eyes. This was an obvious gotcha on his part. He wanted to remind his mother how little she meant to him, to show her he hadn’t considered her important enough to let her know he was getting married. What a totally crappy thing to do to someone on her deathbed.
“Congrats.” April set down her pencil. “How long have you known each other?”
“Long enough,” he said.
Blue couldn’t keep pretending that what April had witnessed a few short hours ago hadn’t happened. “Last night was an aberration. Just so you know, I was fully clothed when I went to bed.”
April’s eyebrow formed a skeptical arch.
Blue tried to look demure. “I took a virginity vow when I was thirteen.”
“A what?” April asked.
Dean sighed. “She didn’t take a virginity vow.”
As a matter of fact, Blue had done exactly that, although even at thirteen she’d had her doubts about keeping it. But she’d long ago made her peace with God, if not Sister Luke, who’d coerced her into the whole thing. “Dean doesn’t agree, but I think a wedding night should mean something. That’s why I’m moving into the caravan tonight.”
He snorted. April gazed at Blue for a long time, then at him. “She’s…lovely.”
“That’s all right.” He set down the sketch. “You can say what you really think. Believe me, I’ve said a lot worse.”
“Hey!”
“The first time I saw her was at a street carnival.” He walked over to inspect the countertops. “She had her face stuck through one of those wooden cutouts, so naturally she caught my attention. You’ve got to admit that face is something. By the time I saw the rest of her, it was too late.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Blue reminded them.
“There’s nothing exactly wrong with her.” April’s statement didn’t carry much conviction.
“She has a lot of other wonderful qualities.” He inspected the hinges on a cupboard door. “I try to turn a blind eye.”
Blue had a fairly good idea where the conversation was headed, so she ran her finger over the sugar in the bottom of the doughnut box.
“Everybody isn’t into fashion, Dean. It’s not some big sin.” Spoken by a woman who could have hopped up from the table at exactly that moment and waltzed down a runway.
“Once we’re married, she’s promised she’ll let me buy her clothes,” he said.
Blue’s gaze wandered to the refrigerator. “Are there maybe some eggs in there? A little cheese for an omelet?”
April’s silver earrings tangled in a ribbon of blunt-cut hair. “You’ll have to live with this, Blue. When he was three years old, he’d throw a fit if his Underoos weren’t a perfect match. In third grade everything had to be Ocean Pacific, and he spent most of junior high in Ralph Lauren. I swear he learned to read by sounding out clothing labels.”
April’s trip down memory lane was a mistake. Dean’s top lip thinned. “I’m surprised you remember so many details from the blackout years.” He wandered back to Blue, and the possessive way he curled his fingers around her shoulder made her wonder if his engagement ruse might also be designed to send out the silent message that he had someone indisputably in his corner. He didn’t realize he’d fallen in with Benedict Arnold.
“In case Dean hasn’t gotten around to sharing,” April said, “I was a junkie.”
Blue had no idea how to respond to that.
“And a groupie,” April added bluntly. “Dean spent his childhood either with nannies or in boarding school so I could follow my dream of getting high and nailing as many rock stars as possible.”
Blue really had no idea how to respond to that. Dean dropped his hand from her shoulder and turned away.
“Uh…how long have you been clean?” Blue said.
“A little over ten years. Respectably employed most of them. Working for myself the last seven.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a fashion stylist in L.A.”
“A stylist? Wow. What exactly does that involve?”
“For God’s sake, Blue…” Dean snatched up his empty coffee mug and carried it to the sink.
“I work with actresses, Hollywood wives—women with more money than taste,” April said.
“It sounds glamorous.”
“It’s mainly a diplomat’s job.”
Blue could understand that. “Convincing a fifty-year-old soap star to give up her minis?”
“Watch it, Blue,” Dean said. “You’re getting personal. April’s fifty-two, but you can bet she has a closet full of minis in every color.”
Blue took in his mother’s endlessly long legs. “I’ll bet every one of them looks fantastic.”
He moved away from the sink. “Let’s go into town. I have some things I need to get.”
“Pick up groceries while you’re there,” April said. “I have food at the cottage, but there’s nothing much here.”
“Yeah, we’ll do that.” With Blue in tow, he headed for the door.
Blue broke the thick silence as Dean shot out onto the highway. “I’m not lying to her. If she asks the color of our bridesmaids’ dresses, I’m telling her the truth.”
“No bridesmaids, so no problem,” he said caustically. “We’re eloping to Vegas.”
“Anybody who knows me knows I’d never elope to Vegas.”
“She doesn’t know you.”
“Presumably you do, and getting married there is like admitting to the world that you’re too disorganized to come up with a better plan. I have more pride.”
He turned up the radio to drown her out. Blue hated misjudging people, especially men, and she couldn’t get past his callousness toward his mother’s fatal illness. She turned the volume back down to punish him. “I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii, but, until now, I couldn’t afford it. I think we’ll get married there. On the beach of some ritzy resort at sunset. I’m so glad I found a rich husband.”
“We’re not getting married!”
“Exactly,” she shot back. “Which is why I don’t want to lie to your mother.”
“Are you on my payroll or not?”
She sat up straighter. “Am I? Let’s talk about that.”
“Not now.” He looked so irritable that she temporarily fell silent.
They passed an abandoned cotton mill nearly swallowed up by undergrowth, then a well-maintained mobile home park, followed by a golf course that advertised karaoke Friday nights. Here and there an old plow or a wagon wheel held up a mailbox. She decided to make a stealth attack on her fake fiancé’s private life. “Since we’re engaged, don’t you think it’s time you told me about your father?”
His knuckles tightened ever so slightly on the steering wheel. “No.”
“I’m fairly good at connecting the dots.”
“Un-connect them.”
“It’s hard. Once I get an idea in my head…”
He shot her a killer glare. “I don’t talk about my father. Not to you. Not to anybody.”
She argued with herself for only a moment before she went for it. “If you really want to keep his identity a secret, you should probably stop going all stony-faced every time Jack Patriot comes on the radio.”
He uncurled his fingers and draped them over the top of the wheel, the gesture a little too casual. “You’re overdramatizing. My father was a drummer in Patriot’s band for a while. That’s all there is to it.”
“Anthony Willis is the only drummer the band has ever had. And since he’s black…”
“Check your rock history, babe. Willis sat out most of the Universal Omens tour with a broken arm.”
Dean might be telling the truth, but somehow Blue didn’t think so. April had been open about her rock and roll past, and Blue had seen the way they’d both frozen up when “Farewell, So Long” came on the radio. The possibility that Dean might be Jack Patriot’s son made her head spin. She’d had a crush on the rock star since she was ten. No matter where she’d lived, she’d kept his tapes stacked by her bed and magazine pictures of him pasted inside her school notebooks. His lyrics made her feel less alone.
A city limits sign announced that they’d reached Garrison. A second sign just below it declared that the town was for sale and that anyone interested in buying it should contact Nita Garrison. She twisted in her seat as they whipped past. “Did you see that? How can anybody sell a town?”
“They sold one on eBay a while back,” he said.
“That’s right. And remember when Kim Basinger bought that little town in Georgia? I keep forgetting this is the South. All kinds of weird crap happens here that couldn’t happen anywhere else.”
“A sentiment best kept to yourself,” he said.
They drove past a Greek Revival funeral home and a church. Most of the tan sandstone buildings in the three-block downtown area looked as though they’d been constructed early in the twentieth century. The wide main street had diagonal parking on both sides. Blue spotted a restaurant, a drugstore, a resale shop, and a bakery. A stuffed deer with an OPEN sign hanging from an antler stood guard near the door of an antique store named Aunt Myrtle’s Attic. Just across the street, old trees shaded a park with a four-sided clock and black iron lampposts topped with white globes. Dean pulled into a parking space in front of the pharmacy.
Blue didn’t have much faith in his comment about her being on his payroll, and she wondered if she could find a job in such a small town. “Do you notice anything strange?” she said as he flicked off the ignition.
“Other than you?”
“No fast food.” She took in the shabby but quaint main street. “I didn’t see any chain restaurants out on the highway, either. This place isn’t big, but it’s big enough for a NAPA Auto Parts store or a Blockbuster. Where are they? If you took away the cars and ignored peoples’ clothes, it would be hard to figure out what year it is.”
“Interesting you should mention clothes.” He studied her black bike shorts and camouflage T-shirt. “I guess you didn’t get the dress code memo that came with your new job.”
“That piece of crap? I tossed it out.”
A woman’s face popped up in the window of Barb’s Tresses and Day Spa next to the pharmacy. At the insurance agency on the other side, a balding man peered out from behind a church rummage sale poster. She imagined similar heads popping up across the street. In a town this small, the news of their famous new neighbor’s arrival would spread quickly.
She followed Dean into the pharmacy, keeping a respectful three paces behind, which further annoyed him, even though he’d brought it on himself with his attitude. He disappeared to the back of the store while she talked to the cashier and discovered there were no job openings. Two women rushed in, one black and one white. The man from the insurance agency entered, followed by an older woman with wet hair. Next came a skinny guy with a plastic name tag that identified him as Steve.
“There he is,” insurance man said to the others.
They all craned their necks to stare at Dean. A woman in a bright pink business suit came charging in, her taupe pumps clicking on the tile floor. She looked as though she was around Blue’s age, too young for her hair to be so stiffly sprayed, although Blue had no room to criticize anyone’s hairstyle. She’d have gotten hers cut if she hadn’t left Seattle so abruptly. She edged toward the mascara display just as the woman called out to Dean, uttering his name on a long, adoring breath. “Dean…I just heard that you’d shown up at the farm. I was on my way out to welcome you.”
Blue peered around the mascara in time to watch Dean’s blank expression shift to recognition. “Monica. Nice to see you.” He held nail clippers, an Ace Bandage, and a package of what looked like gel shoe inserts. No condoms.
“Goodness, the town is buzzin’,” Monica said. “Everybody’s been waiting for you to show up. Isn’t Susan O’Hara amazing? Don’t you love what she’s done to the house?”
“Amazing, all right.”
Monica drank him in like a frosty glass of sweet tea. “I hope you’re staying for a while.”
“I’m not sure. Depends on a couple of things.”
“You can’t leave till you’ve had a chance to meet all of Garrison’s movers and shakers. I’ll be happy to throw a little cocktail party and introduce you to everybody.” She curled her fingers around his arm. “You are just going to love it here.”
He was used to having his personal space invaded, and he didn’t pull away but tilted his head toward the cosmetics instead. “I have someone I want you to meet. Blue, come over here so I can introduce you to my real estate agent.”
Blue checked her impulse to duck farther behind the mascara. Maybe this woman could help her find a job. She slapped on her friendliest smile and made her way over. Dean pulled away from his real estate agent’s overly possessive hand to wrap his arm around her. “Blue, this is Monica Doyle. Monica, my fiancée, Blue Bailey.”
Now he was just being lazy.
“We’re getting married in Hawaii,” he said. “On the beach at sunset. Blue wanted to go to Vegas, but I’m too well organized for that.”
He was perfectly capable of fending off women without resorting to an imaginary fiancée, but apparently he didn’t want the tedium of dealing with all those panties being thrown at him. She had to admit she was surprised.
Monica’s face had fallen, but she did her best to hide her disappointment behind some rapid eye blinks and a quick survey of Blue’s appearance. The real estate agent took in the camouflage T-shirt Blue had appropriated from her apartment building’s laundry room after it had been thumbtacked to the bulletin board for a month. “You are the cutest thang, now aren’t you?”
“Dean thinks so,” Blue said modestly. “I’m still not sure how he managed to overcome my aversion to aging frat boys.”
His warning squeeze pulled her into his armpit, which smelled deliciously of one of those expensive male deodorants that came packaged in phallic-shaped glass bottles stamped with designer logos. She stayed there a few beats too long before she poked her head back out. “I noticed the For Sale sign when we came into town. What’s that all about?”
Monica pursed her penciled and glossed lips. “Nita Garrison being her normal hateful self, that’s all. Some people aren’t worth talking about. We do our best not to pay her any mind.”
“Is it true?” Blue asked. “The town’s really up for sale?”
“I suppose it depends on how you define town.”
Blue started to ask how they defined this one, but Monica was already calling over the people lurking in the aisles so she could introduce them.
Ten minutes later, they finally escaped. “I’m breaking this engagement,” Blue grumbled as she followed Dean to the car. “You’re too much trouble.”
“Now, sweetheart, surely our love is strong enough to survive a few bumps in the road of life.” He stopped at a newspaper vending machine.
“Introducing me as your fiancée made you look ridiculous, not me,” she said. “Those people aren’t blind. We look bizarre together.”
“You have some serious self-esteem issues.” He dug in his pocket for change.
“Me? Try again. Nobody’s going to believe a brainiac like Blue Bailey would fall for a mental lightweight like you.” He ignored her and pulled out a paper. She stepped in front of him. “Before we head for the grocery, I need to make inquiries about a job. Why don’t you have some lunch while I look around?”
He tucked the paper under his arm. “I already told you. You’re working for me.”
“Doing what?” She squinted up at him. “And how much are you paying?”
“Don’t you worry about it.”
He’d been irritable with her all morning, and she didn’t like it. It wasn’t her fault his mother was dying. All right, so it was her fault, but he didn’t know that, and he shouldn’t punish her for April’s medical tragedy.
When they reached the grocery store, the introductions started all over again as one person after another welcomed him to the town. He was cordial to everybody, from the pimple-faced produce clerk to a crippled old man in a VFW cap. The older kids were in school, but he rubbed bald baby heads, shook a slobbery fist, and engaged in an encouraging conversation with an adorable three-year-old named Reggie who didn’t want to use a potty. Dean was the weirdest combination of ego and decency she’d ever met in one person, although his decency seemed to stop with her.
While he handled PR, she slipped away to do the grocery shopping. The store didn’t carry a wide selection, but she found the basics. He met up with her at the checkout line, where she had to stand silently by as he whipped out his Visa card. This couldn’t go on. She had to make some money.
Dean unloaded the groceries and left Blue the job of deciding where to put them while he went back outside to move his car into the barn. Even Annabelle didn’t know the identity of his real father, but Blue had dug it up after spending only four days with him. She was the most intuitive person he’d ever met, not to mention the most devious, and he had to play a smarter game.
After he’d cleared out a space in the barn for his car, he poked around in the shed for a shovel and hoe and started attacking the weeds growing near the house’s foundation. As he breathed in the smell of honeysuckle, he remembered exactly why he’d bought this place instead of the Southern California beach house he’d always imagined. Because being here felt right. He loved the old buildings, the way the hills sheltered the farm. He loved knowing this land had been part of something more lasting than a football game. But most of all, he loved the privacy. No crowded Southern California beach could give him that, and when he needed his ocean fix, he could always fly to the coast.
He barely knew what privacy felt like. First, growing up in boarding schools, then embarking on a college athletic career that had brought him instant recognition. After that, he’d turned pro. Finally, with those damned End Zone ads, even people who weren’t football fans recognized him. He stiffened as he heard the jingle of bracelets. Bitterness curdled his stomach. She was trying to ruin this like she’d tried to ruin everything else.
“I was planning to hire a landscape crew,” his mother said.
He jabbed the shovel into a clump of weeds. “I’ll deal with it when I’m ready.” He didn’t care how long she’d been sober. Every time he looked at her, he remembered tear-streaked makeup, slurred speech, and the weight of her arms dragging on his neck during her drunken, drugged-up pleas for his forgiveness.
“You’ve always been happiest outside.” She came closer. “I don’t know much about plants, but I think you’re trying to take out a peony bush.”
Considering the life she’d led, his mother should have looked like Keith Richards, but she didn’t. Her body was toned, her jawline a little too smooth to be entirely natural. Even her long hair offended him. She was fifty-two, for chrissake. Time to cut it off. As a teenager, he’d been forced into more than a few fights when one of his classmates gave a too detailed description of her ass or whatever other body part she’d chosen to show off on one of the rare days she condescended to visit him at school. With the toe of her shoe, she unearthed a flattened tin can. “I’m not dying.”
“Yeah, I figured that out last night.” And Blue was going to pay for her lie.
“Not even sick. There goes your big celebration.”
“Maybe next year.”
She didn’t flinch. “Blue has a big heart. She’s an interesting person. Different than I would have expected.”
She’d gone on a fishing expedition, but she wasn’t going to catch anything. “That’s why I asked her to marry me.”
“She has those big innocent eyes, but there’s something sexy about her, too.”
An X-rated nursery rhyme…
“She’s not beautiful,” April went on, “but she’s… something better. I don’t know. Whatever it is, she doesn’t seem to have a clue about it.”
“She’s a train wreck.” Too late, he remembered he was supposed to be smitten. “Just because I’m in love doesn’t mean I’m blind. It’s the fact that she’s her own person I’m attracted to.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
He grabbed the hoe and began hacking at some weeds around a rosebush. He knew it was a rosebush because it had a couple of flowers.
“You heard about Marli Moffatt,” she said.
The hoe struck a rock. “Hard to avoid. It’s all over the news.”
“I guess her daughter will go to Marli’s sister. God knows Jack won’t do anything but write a check.”
He tossed down the hoe and picked up the shovel again.
She toyed with one of her bracelets. “I hope you’ve figured out by now that kicking me out isn’t a good idea, not if you want to live here in any kind of comfort this summer. I’ll be out of your life permanently in three or four weeks.”
“That’s what you said in November when you showed up at the Chargers game.”
“It won’t happen again.”
He stabbed the shovel into the dirt, then worked it free. She’d been on top of everything today. It was hard to reconcile her efficiency with the drugged-out woman who’d regularly misplaced her kid. “Why should I believe you this time?”
“Because I’m sick of living with guilt. You’re never going to forgive me, and I’m not asking again. Once the house is done, I’m gone.”
“Why are you doing this? Why the fucking charade?”
She shrugged, looking bored—the last woman in the bar after the fun had ended. “I thought it would be a kick, that’s all.”
“Hey, Susan!” Mr. Horny Electrician poked his head around the corner. “Can you come here for a minute?”
Dean dug up another rock as she walked away. Now that he saw how many tasks she was juggling, he knew he’d be hurting himself more than her if he made her leave. He could always head back to Chicago, but the idea of letting her drive him away stuck in his craw. He didn’t run from anybody, especially not from his mother. But he also couldn’t stand the idea of being alone with her, even on a hundred acres of property, and that was why keeping Blue around had become a necessity, not just an impulse. She’d be his buffer.
He envisioned Blue’s head and guillotined a thistle with one clean blow. Her lie about April stepped over more boundaries than he could count. Although he’d met a lot of manipulative women, he’d never met one with more gall, but before he confronted her, he intended to let her swing in the breeze.
By the time the carpenters left for the day, he’d cleared the worst of the weeds from the foundation without doing too much damage to what he finally figured out were the peony bushes. His shoulder ached like a son of a bitch, but he’d been cooped up too long, and he didn’t care. It felt good using his body again.
As he emerged from the toolshed, the smell of something savory drifted his way from the open kitchen window. Blue had decided to cook, but he had no intention of sitting through a cozy dinner that included his mother, and he didn’t doubt for a moment that Blue would invite her.
On his way into the house, his thoughts abruptly returned to Marli Moffatt’s death and the eleven-year-old daughter she’d left behind. His half sister. The idea was unreal. He knew what it felt like to be an orphan, and one thing was for damn sure. That poor kid had better be able to look after herself because Jack Patriot wouldn’t do it for her.