“Yes,” Leslie said, and suddenly her brow furrowed and she shook her head. “No, that’s not what I meant. You are an adult and I respect you. I just worry, that’s all.”
“So your worrying—both of you worrying—is more important than me being able to choose my own food or go where I want without being tracked like a parolee. How long is that going to last? Do I get to choose my own food when I’m thirty? When I’m forty?”
“That’s enough, Frances Ann,” her father told her. “We can hash out our situation later. But your mama didn’t do it to hurt you. She may have messed up, but she did it because she loves you.”
Frankie’s head whipped toward her father, and when she saw the rare look of disappointment on his face, all the fire in her belly was doused by shame. Her resolve crumbled and her head dropped into her hands. Her parents weren’t doing this for the sake of controlling her. The babying, the breakfasts, the tracking, they were coming from a place of love. Good intentions didn’t make their efforts any less annoying, but at least she could say they meant well. How many people did she know who couldn’t say the same of their parents?
“I’m sorry,” she said, sighing. “I’m just grumpy and tired from last night. I shouldn’t have snapped at you, Mama.”
Mama smiled and patted her shoulder. “It’s all right, honey. I know you didn’t mean it.”
The peace in the kitchen restored, Frankie said, “I thought you were scheduled to go in early this morning, Daddy.”
Bob waved his hand dismissively. “Eh, Margot’s takin’ my meeting with the Portenoys so I could drive you into work. I figured you’d be feelin’ rough.”
Frankie frowned. She knew her parents were indulgent, but this seemed like an underwhelming response to one’s adult daughter going out to tie one on. Also, her father was reading the sports page. Bob McCready was enthusiastic about a lot of things in life, but sports was not one of them. He knew enough about the Dawgs and the Braves to keep up polite, surface conversation, but he never read the sports section.
“What’s goin’ on?” Frankie asked.
“Nothin’,” Bob said, putting the paper in front of his face so he wasn’t making eye contact.
“Why are you readin’ the sports section?”
“Because I want to see whether . . . Scooter McCluskey’s on the injured list.”
“Did you just make that name up?” Frankie asked.
Bob cleared his throat. “No.”
“Daddy, what’s in the paper that you don’t want me to see?”
“Nothing!” Bob squeaked.
“No, I’d like to see the front page of the Ledger, please.”
“I lost it,” Leslie said, clearing her throat.
“You lost it?” Frankie deadpanned. “In the ten-step walk from the front porch?”
“One of Tootie’s dogs must have eaten it.”
Frankie rolled her eyes and bounced out of the chair. She opened the door to the stainless steel freezer, digging under Mama’s bags of frozen hash browns. She pulled out a neatly folded section of newspaper. “Really, Mama? The freezer? It doesn’t work with the Halloween candy. Why would it work now?”
“Frankie, honey, now don’t get upset,” Bob cautioned.
“What in the hell?” Frankie gasped.
Featured prominently on the front page of the Ledger, above the fold, was one of the pictures Margot had taken of Frankie getting “arrested.” But the headline mentioned nothing about Lock Down Hunger or the fact that the arrest was fake. It just said LOCAL CORONER TAKEN INTO CUSTODY BY SHERIFF ERIC LINDEN and mentioned an “In Other News” story on an interior page. And because it was the picture where Margot had suggested that everybody pretend they were deeply concerned that their undertaker/relative was being hauled away, E.J.J., Stan, Bob, and Frankie all looked appropriately grim.
“How did they even get Margot’s picture?” Frankie cried, leafing through the paper.
“Facebook,” Leslie said.
“But Margot only put it up yesterday!”
“It’s the information age, Frankie,” Leslie said.
Grunting, Frankie found the “In Other News” story by Gary Thrope: SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT INVESTIGATING A BREAK-IN AT McCREADY’S FAMILY FUNERAL HOME. Gary, the paper’s chief news reporter, livestock reporter, and copy editor, used careful wording and omissions to imply that while the door to the funeral home was most certainly pried open, the sheriff hadn’t found any evidence of someone from outside the family breaking in. The story didn’t mention the surveillance footage or the broken Jesus paintings, but it did mention that Frankie was questioned for quite some time. All in all, between the story and picture, the implication was that Frankie had staged the break-in and Eric was charging her for it.
“Oh, come on!” she cried, slapping the paper on the table. “Has E.J.J. seen this?”
“First thing this morning,” Bob said. “He’s not upset. He knows you didn’t do anything and Gary is bein’ a jackass. E.J.J.’s going down to talk to him first thing this morning. He does not want you talking to anyone at the paper. He wants you to have breakfast and go in to work as usual.”
“What in the hell did I do to Gary Thrope?” Frankie huffed. “I haven’t even spoken to him in weeks, not since the Huffman drowning.”
“Honey, think about it, real hard,” Leslie told her, frowning as she slid a plate full of bacon and egg-fried-bread in front of her. The frown was off-putting. Her mama was a relentlessly positive person, particularly in the morning. But her mother looked almost . . . frustrated with her? This expression was so foreign to Frankie that she wasn’t quite sure how to identify it.
Frankie groaned, scrubbing her hands over her face. Gary Thrope was married to Lynnie Thrope, one of Marnette Lewis’s multitude of cousins. There was no free press in Lake Sackett when in-laws were involved.
Leslie forced a breath out of her nose and then smiled tightly. “It’s a really good picture of you.”
“Mama, no.”
IT TOOK ALL of Frankie’s self-control, which was not legendary, to force herself to go to work, do her job, and not make multiple phone calls to the newspaper, the national guard, and Oprah to vent her anger. She tried not to take it personally that E.J.J. had taken her cell phone before she’d gone down to the mortuary. And taken the line out of the back of her office phone. And had Margot change the password to the business’s Wi-Fi.
The only positive in the situation was that Eric couldn’t call her, either. Given the multiple waves of conflicting feelings she had about that particular law enforcement official, she thought that was for the best.
By three, she’d processed four clients, reorganized all of her supplies, and caught up on all of her paperwork. She was actually considering cleaning out her filing cabinet when Margot knocked on the mortuary door.
“Everybody covered?” she asked.
“Yep, come on in.” Frankie stripped off her rubber cleaning gloves and shoved them behind her back, as if she weren’t just about to spray bleach into her filing drawer.
“Were you about to Clorox your filing cabinet?” Margot asked.
“No comment.”
“You know what you need?” Margot said.
“A crossbow and about three pounds of saltwater taffy?”
“No,” Margot said. “For so many reasons, no.”
“Dang it,” Frankie muttered.
“You need a distraction,” Margot told her.
“I won’t argue with you there.”
“So, come with me to the Trunk-R-Treat meeting at the elementary school. You can help me fend off the craziest of the moms. It will be fun!” Margot exclaimed, smiling and doing the whole jazz-hands maneuver.
Frankie closed her hands over Margot’s fingers and held them together. “I know we were raised differently, but that’s no excuse for your flawed definition of fun.”
“Come on!” Margot said. “It will get you out of the mortuary, and you’ll have the chance to show your friends and ne
ighbors that you are not, in fact, in jail right now for faking a break-in!”
“I hate it when you make a good point.” Frankie sighed, shrugging out of her lab coat. “I thought the PTA wasn’t running the Trunk-R-Treat. Why is the meeting being held at the school?”
Margot waited by the exit bay while Frankie shut down her computer. “It was the only place other than the Baptist church that was big enough for the crowd. I’ve found that holding meetings in a nondenominational building results in fewer comparisons between reading Harry Potter and devil worship.”
“How does that even come up in conversation?”
Margot’s expression became alarmingly cheerful. “You’d be amazed.”
THE MEETING TURNED out to be more fun than Frankie expected. She felt like Margot’s enforcer, sitting at the front of the school library, glaring at the moms when they got unruly.
And unruly they were.
First, there came Margot’s big announcement of the evening, which was that she’d signed up so many people to run trunks that the event would have to move to the elementary school, which had a perfect circular drop-off lot to host the cars, while the food booths could be set up at the teachers’ parking spaces. All hell broke loose. Women started yelling about tradition and “community values.” Frankie was completely confused, because as far as she was concerned, having so many cars involved that the event had to be moved to a larger space was a good thing. And it took Margot several explanations, a few mild threats, and an insinuation that maybe the objecting moms didn’t want the event to go well before they accepted that the festivities had a new home.
Then came the special requests. Laurie Huff, the mother of two of the meanest girls in the third grade, wanted to make a rule that if one child showed up in the same costume as another child, the latecomer had to go home and change. Lizzie Withnall wanted to propose that all the participating trunks give away plain M&M’s because otherwise, the kids might be overwhelmed with choices. Charlene Hall wanted to change the name of the event entirely, because she felt the Trunk-R-Treat was too closely related to Halloween and, therefore, evil.
Charlene didn’t have kids. She just really hated Halloween.
If not for Frankie and Sweet Johnnie Reed, who was a vocal supporter of Margot, the meeting might have fallen into chaos. When Laurie said that her daughters’ Halloween would be ruined if someone else wore their costumes, Sweet Johnnie said, “Oh, shug, surely your daughters have more generosity of spirit than to send some other child home and make them miss out on treats, just because they have the same outfit?”
When Annabeth Blackwell suggested no candy be distributed, only dried fruit, Frankie told her, “Get out.” And then stared at her until Annabeth felt so uncomfortable that she walked out.
Eventually the troublemakers quieted down and Margot was able to establish a list of trunk volunteers, the placement of cars, how much candy still needed to be purchased, and so forth. A few hours later, they had a respectable plan of operations and had whittled away most of the ridiculous rules through the sheer force of Margot’s will. The only decision left was to determine the prizes for the best trunk decorations, but Margot insisted that she would choose them so they would remain a surprise. And then she dismissed the Trunk-R-Treat moms with a cheerful “Everything is well in hand, ladies. Now get out.”
And to Frankie’s surprise, they got out.
“You are really growing into your role as a small-town mover and shaker,”
“Believe it or not, Marianne says this is nothing compared to the meetings they have to plan the school holiday pageant—”
Suddenly, Margot bent over the wastebasket and threw up copious amounts of, well, everything.
“Holy crap, Margot, are you okay?” Frankie said, grabbing a bottle of water from the refreshment table and forcing Margot—and the wastebasket she was clutching to her chest—into a nearby chair. Before Frankie could bring the bottle to Margot’s lips, she threw up again.
“Phew.” Frankie blew out a breath and held her face away from Margot’s misery.
“Oh, please, you deal with dead bodies all day,” Margot croaked.
“The dead don’t puke,” Frankie told her. “Are you okay? Is this regular sick or food poisoning sick? Did you eat something Aunt Donna made? We’ve warned you over and over.”
“No, I haven’t been food-poisoned by Aunt Donna,” Margot told her, rolling her eyes and then vomiting again.
“But what else could it be?” Frankie thought back to their night at the Dirty Deer. Margot hadn’t actually had any beer, now that she thought about it. Every time Frankie had poured one for her, Margot had passed it along to Duffy. She’d had water with her possum eggs. Come to think of it, she’d eaten a crazy amount of possum eggs.
Frankie gasped. “Margot, are you pregnant?”
“I haven’t had the nerve to take a test yet, but yeah, I’m pretty sure I am,” Margot said, wiping at her watery eyes.
“How?”
Margot glared at Frankie. “The usual way.”
“I know ‘how,’ I’m just askin’ how a modern, worldly girl like yourself managed to get knocked up. Don’t you know about birth control? Keepin’ a dime between your knees and all that?”
Margot snickered, grabbing a tissue from the librarian’s desk and blowing her nose. “The dime thing is one we didn’t try. We’ve been really careful, but nothing’s one hundred percent effective. Especially when you’re under stress, which, let’s face it—as nice as everything has been since I’ve moved back, gettin’ to know my dad, gettin’ to know the family, organizin’ the Founders’ Festival, adjustin’ to a life that involves dogs and children and school schedules . . . yeah, it’s all been stressful.”
“Are you happy?”
“I don’t know!” Margot sobbed. “First of all, ‘morning sickness’ is bullshit. I’ve been throwing up round the clock, which was my first clue that something was wrong. And I’m tired and my boobs hurt and I’m eating everything in sight. I tried to ignore the symptoms, thinking maybe I just had the flu or something, but here we are. And second, I just don’t know. It’s not that I’m scared. I mean, sure, Kyle and I have only been dating for a couple of months. I have eyeliners older than our relationship. It must have happened one of the first times we were together. And he’s got the girls, and I don’t want him to think I’m trapping him, and I definitely don’t want the girls to think I’m trying to replace them with another baby. And I have no idea whether I’m ready for this, because I just got to the point where spending time with kids didn’t make me want to break out in hives. But when I think about having a baby with Kyle and raising it with all of the family nearby, it’s almost enough to make me forget how badly this messes up my life plan. I wouldn’t want anybody else’s baby, but I would want Kyle’s baby. He makes really nice babies.”
Frankie felt so bad for Margot, she wouldn’t even mention the swear jar. She knelt next to her, squeezing Margot’s hand. “Well, first, we’re going to go to the drugstore two towns over so no one sees you buying a pregnancy test, and you’re going to woman up and pee on a stick so we get an answer one way or another. And then you’re going to see a doctor, and then you’re going to tell Kyle. And then you’re going to tell Stan, but you have to promise to wait until I’m there so I can see his face.”
“My dad!” Margot cried, burying her face in her tissue. “How am I supposed to tell my dad?”
Frankie patted her shoulder. “Well, he wasn’t around for any of your teenage crises, so this is his chance to make up for his absence.”
“Thank you, Frankie.” Margot sniffed as Frankie hugged her. “I really appreciate your help.”
“Well, you wanted to distract me from my problems. Mission accomplished.”
FRANKIE DROPPED MARGOT at home with the pregnancy tests she’d bought at a Walgreens fifty miles away. Margot insisted that she didn’t want to take a pregnancy test in a gas station bathroom, and promised to let Frankie know the results,
after talking to a doctor and Kyle.
Once again, Frankie was struck by the huge difference between her cousin’s life and her own. Margot suspecting that she was pregnant had stirred something wholly new in Frankie. Margot was only a few years older, but here she was, in a mostly functional relationship, living on her own, and starting a family. Frankie couldn’t even imagine having a child right now. She couldn’t imagine having a child in the next five years, not stuck in this weird delayed adolescent limbo. And she didn’t know how to start fighting her way out of it and keep her resolve in the face of hurting her parents. She couldn’t even fight for her right to Pop-Tarts.
When she thought about Margot’s life, Frankie was . . . envious. She’d never begrudged someone their story. She loved her own life. She had a loving family, a great job, plus enthusiastic and athletic sex with an interesting array of partners. But seeing Margot moving into a new stage like pregnancy, Frankie was jealous of her cousin. And she was ashamed of that jealousy. And even more ashamed of how she’d been dodging Eric since that morning in the jail cell.
The upside to Margot’s situation was that she hadn’t thought about Gary Thrope or his abuse of the First Amendment for hours. Not until she walked onto her parents’ porch and found E.J.J. sitting on the swing. It was like being stalked by Andy Griffith, if Andy Griffith spent less time on his guitar and more time making his own beef jerky.
“So, you’ve had an interestin’ day.”
“It’s safe to say that I hate everybody and everything,” Frankie told him, sliding next to him on the swing. E.J.J. handed her a beer. “Except you.”
“The paper has agreed to print a ‘clarification’ denotin’ that you were not, in fact, charged with anything during your arrest for charity,” E.J.J. said. “Technically, nothing in the article was false, it was all implication, so they wouldn’t print a retraction.”
Frankie frowned. “And what page will that clarification run on?”
“Page seven. Next to the public notice about predatory zebra mussels.”