“Town was split. Half of ’em thought he was going to use them as lamp pulls or, like you said, art. Other half thought he was sparing Gertie the embarrassment of having these on her shelves for anyone passing through town to find.”
“Could’ve been both,” I murmur.
“Everyone kept angling to get an invitation to his house for dinner so they could see if he’d hung them on his lamps.”
“That’s a warning, right? Buy my sex toys online in discreet packaging?”
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters.
“I’m not used to small-town life. I need to know these things.”
He turns his back to me, but his neck has gone even redder than it was before. “Cece Jones used to wait tables at the diner. Not long after Tony bought his box of, ah, lamp pulls, Cece got caught sleeping with a married minister two towns over, and everyone forgot about Tony.”
I wince.
“She wiped her social media accounts, quit her job, and hightailed it out of the county. Everyone got more tied up in guessing where she went than with worrying over Tony’s lamps.” He shakes his head and tosses the blown glass butt plug into his box. “This town’s great in so many ways. You need someone to come clear out your root cellar, all you have to do is put out a call on one of the town’s social pages. But you want to keep a secret . . .”
I shiver.
Can’t help it. I know it’s only a matter of time before someone finds out my mom’s in prison and why. Junie and I are both finally feeling like we might fit in here. Not quite all the way to fitting entirely, but close enough to see that it’s a possibility. I can’t drop into Iron Moose, the diner, the sandwich shop, the bakery, Opal’s, you name it in downtown, without getting greetings from people that I’m starting to think of as friends.
And yes, I know I’m overcompensating by volunteering for everything under the sun, from taking a look at a running toilet to switching out faulty outlets to offering to help paint someone’s nursery, but I have those skill sets, my alimony is enough to pay my bills, and right now, I need to feel like a contributing member of the community more than I need to feel like people like me merely because I was famous at exactly one level above I had five minutes of fame for going viral on social media.
But the biggest point is that we’re almost there. We very nearly belong. I don’t want to know if the people here would shun us if they found out what Mom did.
I just want to live in my happy bubble where I feel like I’m finding my place and Junie’s talking to me again and I feel optimistic about the future.
It’s lovely to be here in this mental and emotional space again.
But stronger than I was when I was with Dean.
Knowing that if I can walk away from my marriage and start over again with Junie here, I can handle anything.
“You have secrets?” Flint asks me, clearly curious about my silence.
If he thinks he’s getting another secret out of me, he is so wrong.
“Do you honestly think taking me down into a root cellar and showing me my uncle’s foot-fetish collection earns you the right to any more of my secrets?” I deadpan.
He stares right back for a split second, and then the craziest thing happens.
He laughs.
And not just any old laugh.
No, this is a full-on, doubled-over, wheezing so hard he probably has tears in his eyes kind of laugh.
An I’ve been trying to hold it together and be stoic all morning, and you have finally broken me kind of laugh.
I back up and sink to the steps in the small stairwell under the door and watch him completely lose his shit in the best possible way.
This man has a past. He has relationship damage. He definitely has trust issues. He’s probably every bit as lonely as I’ve felt more times than I care to admit in the past few years.
But even with all his own issues, he’s taking care of Junie at school, and he did the best he could to make room for her on the soccer team.
“What are you going to do with all of this?” I ask him once he’s quit laughing. “Because I am one hundred percent on the This is Flint’s Problem train, for the record.”
He looks down at the box, then flashes me the most mischievous grin I have ever seen in my entire life. “EBay or Etsy.”
“Oh my God.”
“Athletic department budget got cut last year. I know a guy who’ll put it up for us, won’t ask questions, and funnel the profits back to the school. Might even be enough to get that liability-insurance package the principal won’t approve. Those are some hot feet there. They’ll fetch a pretty penny.”
“Oh my God.”
He grins broader.
Every ounce of me freaking swoons.
Trouble?
No.
It’s way worse than that.
Chapter 15
Flint
The worst part of small-town living is that you can’t avoid anyone.
Ever.
Avoidance isn’t usually my thing—I prefer to face a problem head-on—but my problem is that I want to bang Maisey Spencer, and I can’t.
Seeing her when she picks June up from practice or comes to the team’s games doesn’t make it better. Seeing her drive past the gatehouse a few mornings and evenings a week doesn’t make it better. Running into her having dinner with new friends at Iron Moose or walking into Opal’s house on book club night and accidentally overhearing her commiserating with friends over feeling like she’ll never be a good enough mother doesn’t make it better.
Not seeing her doesn’t make it better. Not when every morning, I wake up, peer up the driveway, and squint to see if I can catch any motion at the house.
Which I can’t see from the gatehouse.
Never been able to. Won’t ever be able to.
Reality—and geography—doesn’t work that way.
But I still look.
And I hear her. I hear saws. I hear hammering. I hear boards being tossed on one another.
Telling myself that she’s just as unavailable emotionally as I am doesn’t help.
Teaching and coaching her daughter every day doesn’t make it better.
Trying to work up being mad that she missed Tony’s funeral doesn’t help. Watching her put all the effort into being a good mom, hearing stories about times she was happy here with him as a teenager, and knowing that Tony was cut out by most of the rest of her family has made me acutely aware that there’s always more to a story than anyone thinks there is.
And watching Maisey putting everything in place to fix all the things that he never got around to because he didn’t think any of them were important on an old hobby ranch?
Getting quotes on lumber to reinforce the barn. Fixing the well. I know she started rewiring the original cabin on the land that was converted—poorly—into a guesthouse. Replacing the oven in the main house. Sealing the windows. Replacing the door and locks on the bunkhouse once she realized how easy it would be for Earl to break in.
Fucking hot.
And here I am again, once more thinking I’m in the clear as I dash back to the school at the start of soccer practice to grab the colored jerseys that I left in the locker room, when I hear her voice ringing through the air in the outdoor staff alcove near the back entrance.
“I don’t know, Mom. Ask your guard,” she’s saying quietly right around the corner from me.