She followed Gage’s tail lights in the darkness, winding their way to a part of town she hadn’t been to yet. With the setting of the sun, all of the warmth of the day had disappeared, and Cady found herself shivering violently as she drove.
Was it the cold, though, causing the shivers? Or was it panic?
I am not panicked. This is a fun event; an easy and low-stress way of getting to know my neighbors. I am going to have fun and hang out and I shall not throw up or pass out. Not even once. Not even a little bit.
She could tell which house was the Dyer’s house from a block away – there were cars and trucks parked up and down the street, people walking every which way, laughter and music ringing out…
It appeared that Gage was not exaggerating when he said that half the town would be here tonight.
I am not going to panic – it’s good that so many people are here. Makes it easier to hide in the crowds. No one will notice me.
She clung to that thought, hanging onto it for all she was worth. She wondered what Emma and Sugar were like. She’d never met either one of them, and with the size of the party that was in full swing, she doubted that’d change tonight. No doubt there’d be crowds of people around the two of them.
They slowly drove past the Dyer house, finally finding a place to park big enough for two vehicles a block down. Cady sat in the darkness of her car, gripping the steering wheel and chanting to herself.
“I’m fine. Everything is fine. This is going to be fun. I’m going to enjoy myself. Everything is fi—”
Knock-knock.
“Are you coming?” Gage asked, his breath in clouds around his head in the freezing mountain air as he stared through her driver’s side window.
She swallowed the yelp of pure terror that was strangling the breath right out of her, and instead slowly peeled her fingers off the steering wheel, one finger at a time. She really, really, really wished he’d quit doing that. Was it too much to ask that he stop jumping out of the shadows and scaring her every time she turned around?
On wobbly legs, she got out of her Jeep and followed him back towards the brightly lit house, balloons and twinkle lights strung across every available surface, twangy music thumping out into the night. Cady concentrated on the lyrics of the song rather than on the rippling muscles of Gage’s arms as he carried the overloaded tray of baked goods, and realized to her horror that the country singer was singing about a red solo cup.
I have officially moved to Hickville. No wonder I’m not fitting in around here. I don’t own a single pair of cowboy boots, and I’m in full possession of all of my teeth.
She wanted to turn around and go back to her Jeep and drive away, but the smells were too enticing and her stomach was rumbling too loudly. She followed him up the front steps and into the brightly lit house instead, the warmth and cheerfulness immediately enveloping her. It gave her the strangest sense of déjà vu, and it took her a moment to figure out why.
The bakery. Other than the moments when Gage is freaking me out completely by sneaking up on me, the bakery has always felt warm and welcoming. His parents – he must’ve gotten this talent from his parents.
As strange as it was, the sheer number of people there made her feel more relaxed. In a crowd this size, no one was going to jump her or attack her – they wouldn’t dare. She was safe here.
She felt the knot in the pit of her stomach unwind just a little, and her breath came a little easier.
“There you are!” She heard a woman’s voice ring out above the general roar of the party and then a female was launching herself at Gage, hugging him and practically knocking the tray of goodies to the ground in her enthusiasm. Cady watched with detached interest, wondering if this was Gage’s girlfriend, when the girl slung her arm through Gage’s and then turned towards Cady, her bright smile growing even brighter. The woman’s eyes skittered up and down Cady, clearly checking her out, and Cady gulped. Dammit. Was she going to get pissy because Cady’d arrived with her boyfriend?
She opened up her mouth to proclaim defensively, “We’re just friends!” when the woman turned back to Gage and punched him on the shoulder. “She’s even prettier than you said!”
Cady’s mouth snapped back shut as she took in two things:
1) This most definitely couldn’t be Gage’s girlfriend, if he’d been telling her that he thought someone else was pretty; and
2) He’d told this woman that he thought Cady was pretty.
Eyes wide, she turned to Gage, waiting for an explanation that made sense.
Clearly unhappy, Gage muttered, “Cady, this is my loud-mouthed sister who is turning 27 years old. Emma, this is Cady, my new next-door neighbor at the bakery. I am going to go deliver this tray over to the dessert table and see what else there is to eat.” He turned and marched away, back ramrod straight, his muscles rippling with every step.
“Ignore him,” Emma said freely, slipping her arm through Cady’s. “He’s just a sourpuss because I spent the last hour hounding him to actually leave the bakery behind and spend time doing something other than adding up numbers or baking up cookies. The man has no concept of how to have fun. Over here,” and she began dragging Cady towards the overloaded buffet tables, apparently not needing a word in response, “is all of the food for the party. Pick out what you like, and then meet me through those doors,” she pointed at the sliding glass doors at the back of the house, “and you can sit with Sugar and me while we discuss Gage’s many failings together. He is my favorite older brother, but that doesn’t mean that he’s perfect.” She slipped her arm out of Cady’s and headed out towards the sliding glass door, skillfully winding through the crowds, glad-handing and chatting as she went.
Cady watched the woman in awe for a moment – she deserved to be in the halls of Congress with that kind of personality – but finally turned back to the overloaded tables with a quiet murmur of appreciation. Food, after all, was why she was in this mess to begin with, and as hungry as she felt in that moment, she was more than a little tempted to just pick up a casserole dish and tip the whole thing towards her mouth, skipping the niceties of plating the food beforehand.
She was a big city girl – maybe she could convince everyone that this was how it was done in Boise nowadays. The latest trend or some such bullshit.
Reluctantly, she gave up the dream and instead picked up a sturdy paper plate – no flimsy, cheap plate here; the Dyers obviously knew what kinds of food quantities to expect – and began working her way down the buffet tables, spooning out tiny portions of every delicious dish and still running out of room all-too-quickly on her plate.
As she went, she sensed…something and looked up to see Gage standing next to an older woman – his grandmother, perhaps? – an unhappy look on his face as they talked, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose absentmindedly. The older woman, her steel-gray hair pulled up in a severe bun, noticed that Cady was looking at them and instead of smiling at her in greeting, the woman turned her back on Cady in a clear sign of disapproval.
Is she mad about the power thing? Did I ruin her cakes like I ruined Gage’s? Or is it something else…?
Clutching her paper plate carefully, she wound towards the glass sliding doors, trying to pretend as if she hadn’t noticed the woman’s clear-as-a-bell unhappiness at her presence.
I’ll go outside and hide from her. Maybe she’ll forget all about me.
It seemed like just as good of a plan as any; Cady wasn’t about to give up her plate of food and drive to Franklin at this point based on a crotchety old woman. Not when she had sustenance right there, ready to be eaten, the smell drifting up to her nose in tantalizing waves.
The Dyers, having spent years holding an outdoor party every April when the weather could be warm, cold, or Antarctic-frozen, had apparently gotten smart and invested in heat lamps that they’d placed throughout the backyard, providing light and much more importantly, heat to the groups of people huddled around them. Cady scanned the crowds, worried that she’d taken too long to get out there – Emma would probably have a hundred friends hanging around her, all wanting to talk to her by now – but finally she found Emma and another girl huddled towards the back of the yard, chatting and laughing freely as they practically hugged the heat lamp they were standing next to.
With a grateful sigh, Cady made her way over to them, thrilled that she recognized at least one person in the huge group. She hadn’t spotted Hannah, so she was guessing her friend either wasn’t close to the Dyers, or had schoolwork to grade, or maybe Elijah didn’t like parties much more than Cady did.
I really need to get around to meeting this guy. Hannah, dating someone…will miracles never cease.
“Hi,” she said shyly as she came walking up to the pair of best friends. There was an energy – a level of comfort between them that spoke of their familiarity with each other – and they turned as one to Cady.
“Cady!” Emma exclaimed excitedly, greeting her as if she hadn’t just chatted with her five minutes earlier. “I was just telling Sugar here that you were going to come out back and join us. Sugar, this is Cady, Gage’s new next door neighbor at the bakery. Cady, this is Sugar, my best friend and Gage’s only full-time employee.”
Carefully, Cady balanced her loaded paper plate in one hand so she could shake Sugar’s hand with the other. Looking the woman over, she could see why Emma had thought her brother should date her. She was petite, despite having just given birth recently, with generously sized breasts for someone that small, and straight brown hair in a braid over her shoulder.
“So good to finally put a face to the name,” Sugar said with a warm smile. “I’ve been gone on maternity leave for the past five weeks, so I haven’t been at the bakery a whole lot, but starting on the 26th, I’ll be back to work full-time. I heard you’ve been having some…problems getting the store next door up and going.”
“Oh?” Emma said, looking at Cady quizzically. “Spill. With me being all the way over in Denver, I’m the last to hear any of the local gossip.”
With Hannah’s warning blaring in her mind, Cady did her best to downplay her disastrous first couple of weeks. “I apparently have terrible taste in electricians,” she said around a mouthful of potato salad, too starved to wait one more moment to start shoving food into her mouth. “I didn’t know that, of course, so…things got a little interesting.” She shoveled a bite of fruit salad in, hoping to stave off more questions by clearly being too busy chewing to talk, not realizing that Sugar would ever-so-helpfully take up the story instead.
“She hired Watson’s Electric,” Sugar told Emma, as if that one statement should explain everything. Emma turned back to Cady, her eyes wide.
“Oh dear God, tell me you didn’t.”
Cady shrugged her shoulders and sent her a grimacing smile as she began working on a juicy slice of ham.
Food. Give me food.
“Knocked out power to the whole town,” Sugar continued, when Cady didn’t. “They almost cancelled school over it because the principal didn’t think they’d get the power back online within the week, once he’d heard who the electrician was.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t get hauled out into town square and drawn and quartered for that one,” Emma said, starting to laugh at the idea of someone intentionally hiring Watson’s Electric, and then abruptly stopped. “Hold on,” she said seriously, every trace of laughter gone, “you’re not telling a lot of people about this, right?”
“I’ve managed to keep myself from making an announcement in town square,” Cady said around a delightfully moist and soft roll. “I’ve been informed that wouldn’t be in my best interest.”
“Definitely something to keep under wraps,” Emma agreed dryly. “Hey, I don’t know if you know this, but I’m actually an architect over in Denver and although the firm I work for specializes in new build projects, I could probably also help with a remodel. I could stop by this weekend before I head back to work and look over your building – tell you what I think you should spend money on, and a rough idea of how much each project should cost.”
This, finally, was enough to get Cady to stop shoving food in her mouth.
“Wow,” she said softly. “I…that would be great.” She wanted to hug Emma, but she kept her hands occupied by the plate of food instead. Having someone on her side, giving her guidance, not just shaming her for stupid mistakes she’d already made…there was no more perfect present than that.
Emma shrugged nonchalantly. “I like challenges, and helping you put together an action plan for a remodel of that piece-of-shit building would totally be a challenge.” Cady couldn’t help her shout of laughter at that. She wasn’t about to admit it to the other Dyer sibling, but the more she worked on the building, the more she realized that it really was a piece of shit.
At this point, she was sticking to it out of sheer pride and nothing more, something she wouldn’t admit to if her life depended upon it.
“I thought you said you were on maternity leave?” Cady asked Sugar hesitantly. “Where’s your baby at?”
“Jaxson, my husband, has her. It’s too cold to keep her outside, even next to the heat lamps, and at parties like this, I wouldn’t be holding her anyway. If you ever want free babysitters, just show up in a crowd of Idaho women with an adorable newborn in your arms. You won’t see your baby again until she either needs fed or her diaper changed. From age 10 to 100, Idaho women have this instinctive maternal love for every bundle of drool within ten miles. It’s a thing you have to see to believe.”
Cady nodded as if she totally understood but honestly, she didn’t. Unlike Hannah, her gift had never really been with the tiny human population; she preferred her humans to be able to pee in a toilet without help, and once they got over the age of 15, she also preferred them not to be in the possession of a penis or too many muscles.
Really, though, she was easy to please. People who had a high tolerance level for quirkiness were also a huge plus, along with the ability to appreciate a good book…or a guilty pleasure book.
As long as it was a female, someone who could pee and poop without Cady’s help, read novels like they were going out of style, and put up with things like Cady not wanting to be around other men, why then, they were destined to become best friends.
Easy to please, honestly.
Before Cady could figure out a socially acceptable response to Sugar’s statement – never her strong suit to begin with – a commotion broke out up on the deck of the house, leading from the house into the backyard. Cady squinted, the bright flames of light from the heat lamps making it more difficult to see in the darkness, when a drunken voice drifted towards them. “It was shupposed to be my baby.” It was a very male and very angry voice, and Cady felt panic shooting through her just from hearing him speak.
Bad guy, bad guy, very bad guy, run away—
“Shit!” Sugar and Emma exclaimed in unison and they took off running towards the back porch.
Cady hesitated for a moment – honestly, running towards the pissed-off male struck her as a Very, Very Bad Idea – but they were also the only two people at the party that Cady knew other than Gage and she didn’t know where he was at, and so despite her very large misgivings, she wasn’t about to let them out of her sight. She dogged their steps, and drew to a stop when they did.
“I knew it!” Emma groaned under her breath. “Hey, Dick,” she called out, “no one invited you here, so why don’t you just leave, and we’ll pretend this never happened?”
A man turned towards them, a hand gun glinting in the porch light, and everyone in the crowd took a step back while inhaling simultaneously…everyone, that was, except for Sugar.
“C’mon now, Richard,” she said softly, placatingly, moving slowly towards the swaying man, his breath coming out in puffs around his head, ringing his head like some sort of dragon breathing fire. “You know this won’t help bring our baby back.”
Why is she moving towards this man? Sugar, you need to run away. Run away! Didn’t you see the gun? Run!
“Sugar and Richard had a baby together?” someone whispered, right behind Cady.
“She fell down the stairs to their basement and lost it before she was very far along,” someone else whispered back. “I’m guessing that he’s taking it personally that she actually had Jaxson’s baby.”
Cady looked at the clearly drunk Richard, waving a gun around in one hand and a beer around in the other, and at Sugar who was only a few steps away from him, doing her best to soothe him. Sugar had seemed so nice, so friendly, so…so normal when they’d stood in the backyard talking. How was it that she’d lived through something so horrendous and had come out the other side still sane?
Because she’s stronger than you are.
“Where is it? Where’s the baby?” Richard demanded, his words slurring together, and then he began stumbling towards Sugar, trying to attack her, his muscles rippling in the porch light, and this time, Cady felt the panic completely overwhelm her, paralyzing her. She couldn’t breathe or think or scream and she wanted to run and hide or kick him in the nuts or something but instead she was just watching as this man attacked a defenseless woman right in front of her—