“Yes.” A long pause. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too.” Molly rubbed her thumb across her grandmother’s hand, the paper-thin skin a bluish white, not the chafed red she knew so well. “I love you, Grams.”
“You’re a good girl, Molly.”
That was their last conversation.
She’d felt her grandma fading further away. She and Uncle Bob stayed by her side in silence, until she slipped her earthly bonds, freed from pain.
Molly shook herself and fished out her house key as she started up the sidewalk to the farmhouse she’d grown up in. Flowers bloomed in pots on the porch. The rug from the kitchen hung over the railing. The place had the aura of waiting for the owner to return.
The front door stuck, forcing her to throw her shoulder into it. After it opened, she decided to leave it open, and entered the house. Immediately, a lifetime of familiar scents engulfed her. The persistent mustiness. The faint aroma of coffee. The pungent scent of Spic and Span cleaner.
She didn’t venture very far into the house. Just to the window that overlooked the garden. She must’ve been lost in thought, because she didn’t hear them come in.
“We were surprised you could tear yourself away from the all-you-can-eat buffets in Denver to come back here,” Jennifer sneered.
Molly schooled her features before she faced her cousins. “I should be grateful you held your tongues while we were at the hospital. I’m guessing your stab at civility is over?”
Jennifer and Brandi exchanged confused looks.
They weren’t the sharpest pencils in the drawer. “Is Uncle Bob with you?”
“No. He’s meeting with the funeral director.”
“Alone? Why didn’t you go with him?”
“Because he told us to look after you.”
Great.
“You had one of those stomach-shrinking surgeries, didn’t you?” Jennifer said.
“That’s what you want to talk about?”
“She’s not denying it,” Brandi pointed out.
Molly closed her eyes and counted to five. “Can you please, for once, act like adults?”
“Excellent suggestion.”
They were all surprised by Reverend Somers’s sudden appearance.
“As a neutral party, I’ll ask you all to refrain from bickering. Keep your past petty grievances private. Hold it together for your grandmother’s memory.”
Jennifer placed her hand on the reverend’s arm. “Of course we will. We loved Grams. We’d never disrespect her. It’s just easy to fall into those old habits. Isn’t it, Molly?”
Easier for some of us—namely you. “Reverend, why are you here?”
He sent Molly an apologetic look. “With all you’ve been through . . . I’m sorry to say that you’ll have to stay elsewhere. Torch Robbins, your grandmother’s attorney, has documentation requiring the house be locked up until the will is read.”
Now she had to shell out money to stay at a motel? Fantastic. Molly looked at the notebook the reverend held. “I assume you have the official documentation?”
“Molly! What is wrong with you?” Brandi pushed into Molly’s personal space. “We have no reason to question what the reverend tells us.”
“You’ve been living in the big city too long,” Jennifer retorted. “We trust our friends and neighbors around here.”
“Which is good and well, but we all know break-ins occur as soon as word gets around there’s been a death and a house sits empty.” Not to mention she wouldn’t put it past her cousins to keep her out of the way so they could go through the house, picking the items of value.
Reverend Somers smiled at her. “Of course you’re entitled to see the paperwork.” He opened his notebook and handed her the first loose sheet of paper. “Erma had this drawn up last year.”
Molly scrutinized the text. For once Grams had made a sound decision, although she hated that Grams was planning ahead for her own death. “It appears to be in order. Thank you.”
“We’re not a bunch of rubes, Molly,” Brandi said snottily.
“Neither am I.” She looked to the reverend. “You’ve been entrusted to lock up?”
“Yes.”
When her cousins asked a question, Molly fled outside.
It hardly seemed fair the day was so beautiful when she was so filled with sadness. It should be gloomy, cold, and rainy. Rather than wait for more attacks from her cousins, Molly wandered to the end of the lane—Grams’s term for the dirt track that connected to the main road.
Early summer in Nebraska meant the scents of dirt and diesel. The air hung heavy with humidity. Bugs buzzed around her feet and head. Birds chirping and the occasional croak of a frog drifted up from the ditches. When she reached the tractor-shaped mailbox, she tipped her head back, letting the watery sunlight heat her face.
A sharp pang jabbed her heart.
Erma Calloway had come to this farm a blushing bride of nineteen. After Grandpa Pete died, Grams had sold off what land she could and rented out the rest. As a widow with no skills outside of being a farmwife, she’d needed the income. Now they had to pack up sixty years’ worth of stuff accumulated over a happy, well-lived life.
Mostly happy. One child had given her joy; the other, trouble. Molly’s mother, Pauline, had skipped town with the carnival the day after she graduated from high school. Almost twenty years passed before Pauline had returned, unmarried, with a two-year-old and addiction problems. Molly’s memories of her mom were of stale cigarette smoke and the sour scent of booze. Within a month of being back on the farm, her mother had bought the farm—she was killed by a train at an unmarked railroad crossing in the middle of the night. During her teen years, Molly suspected her mom had parked her car on that railroad track on purpose. But Molly’s grandmother insisted it was an accident—not suicide.
But the truth was, as she grew up, Molly understood why her mother might’ve done it. Life on the farm wasn’t Norman Rockwell idyllic. Neither was living in small-town Nebraska, where everyone knew everyone, their dirty laundry, family secrets, and shame. Where your relatives judged you, shunned you, hated you, and made your life hell.
Growing up, her cousins Jennifer and Brandi had been the bane of her existence. Being the quiet, shy type, she’d suffered their insults and attacks in silence. The one time she’d complained about their excessive meanness, her grandmother had snapped that they were her family—the only family she’d ever have—and she’d better be grateful that she wasn’t living in foster care. Then she’d told Molly to find a way to deal with it. So she had. She’d become invisible.
In high school her outstanding grades had earned her a full-ride scholarship to University of Nebraska at Lincoln. She’d chosen business accounting—a smart, safe, employable major.
Following college graduation, Molly had returned home for a temporary visit while waiting to see where she’d been accepted to grad school. It had shocked and dismayed her when she’d overheard Grams asking Uncle Bob to find a position for her in his insurance business. One, because nothing could ever make her stay in her hometown permanently. Two, because both Jennifer and Brandi worked there—if sleeping off hangovers in the conference room was considered working. The rest of her life played out before her as a nightmare.
Then the acceptance letter for the graduate program at University of Denver arrived and saved her from that life. And she hadn’t looked back.
“Molly,” Jennifer yelled. “Pull your head out and get back here.”
Lovely. She wandered back to the house.
A bicycle chain had been strung across the front door, locks on both ends.
“The back door is locked too,” Brandi informed her.
Molly walked the reverend to his car. Before her cousins could waylay her, she took off.
As she hit the edge of town, she debated on driving another thirty miles to Norfolk for a hotel room. But it’d be convenient to have a place to escape when everything overwhelmed her over the next
few days.
The exterior of the Motor Inn Motel had been remodeled. She parked beneath the carport and entered the reception area. The space smelled like new paint.
A young woman slid behind the counter. “Welcome to Motor Inn.”
“I need a room for at least three nights. Possibly more.”
“Would you like a single room? Or I have a room with a kitchenette available.”
“The kitchenette would be great.” Molly handed over her credit card.
“Are you just passing through?”
“I’m here for a funeral. Then there’s all the legal stuff to deal with, which is why I won’t know how long I’ll need to stay.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks.” She looked around while she waited for the paperwork. “The place looks a lot different.”
The young clerk beamed at her. “My husband and I took it over last year. Lots of sweat equity, but it’s coming along. Room by room.” She slid the paper and a pen across the counter. “Sign in the boxes and fill in your vehicle information.”
Molly scrawled her name and palmed the key fob.
After parking in front of her room, she unloaded her suitcases. The space was better than she’d expected. An apartment-scaled couch and chair were positioned in front of a flat-screen TV. The compact kitchenette had new countertops, appliances, and cabinetry. A modern bathroom and a bedroom with a king-sized bed rounded out the place.
She secured the chain on the door and breathed a sigh of relief. She desperately needed a nap after driving all night and then spending the last twenty-four hours in the hospital. Her cell phone was dead, so she plugged it in before she face-planted on the puffy bed.
Molly woke up completely disoriented. She squinted at the alarm clock. Crap. Had she really slept six hours? She needed a shower and food.
She checked her phone. The first message was from Amery. The second from Presley. The third from her friends Fee and Katie, who both worked at Black Arts. The fourth message was from Chaz. All basically the same, her friends expressing their condolences.
But calls five, six, seven, eight, and nine were from Deacon. He’d left the first message nine hours after she’d left Denver. “It’s early. Where are you? Call me.”
She moved to message six. “You always have your damn phone on you. Call me. Not kidding, babe.”
Charming. Phone manners weren’t his forte.
Call seven from last night: “I’m at your apartment. You’re not. Call me.”
Call eight, two hours later. “Not cool, not hearing from you at all in twenty-four goddamn hours . . . Jesus, Molly. Call me.”
The last message had been left at nine o’clock this morning. A pause, followed by a sigh. “Sucks about your grandma. But, babe, you don’t have to go it alone. You need me, I’m there. Period. You know that.” A muffled noise, then, “Fuck it.”
She hadn’t purposely kept him in the dark. She’d just been so focused on the inevitable that she’d shut down. And Deacon was wrong. She did have to go it alone. She was used to it.
Her stomach rumbled. She shouldered her purse, slipped on her flip-flops, and set out on foot since most places were within walking distance.
Few streetlamps lit Main Street. The buildings weren’t connected, making it easy for someone to lurk in the shadows and grab an unsuspecting, defenseless person.
Stop. You’re not defenseless. Besides, this is Nebraska. The worst thing that’ll happen to you is you’ll run into someone you know and they’ll bore you with talk of pesticides and projected corn yields.
When Molly reached the Silver Dollar Tavern, she pushed open the heavy door and walked in, hating the immediate silence that her entrance caused, a stranger among the locals. She chose a seat at the bar and smiled at the bartender, who looked familiar.
“What can I get you?” he asked.
“A rum and Diet Coke. And a menu, please.”
“Sure thing.”
The menu consisted of bar food. By the time he’d brought her drink back, she’d decided. “I’ll have a hamburger.”
“Fries with that?”
“No.”
He ripped the top sheet off the green ticket pad and walked to the pass-through window to the kitchen. “Order.”
Molly had barely taken a drink when a guy plopped down at the barstool next to hers.
“My buddy over there thinks he knows you.”
Lame pickup line. “What’s your buddy’s name?”
“Alan Rossdale.”
She pretended she was trying to place him. “I think he graduated a couple years ahead of me.”
The guy scrutinized her. “You’re from around here?”
“Yes. What’s your name?” she asked, even though she knew it.
“Marcus Olney.”
“Ah. The football player. You were in Alan’s class.”
He grinned. “How we survived high school is a miracle. So, pretty lady, what’s your name?”
“Molly Calloway.” And she waited for the jaw to drop.
There it was.
“But you’re . . . Well, shit. You don’t look nothin’ like you used to.”
“We all change.” Some of us for the worse. Marcus, the good-looking, well-built quarterback had morphed into a pudgy average Joe with thinning hair.
“Why are you back here?”
“For my grandma’s funeral.”
“Right. I’d heard about that. Sorry.”
She’d fantasized about this scenario when Marcus was the senior-class stud and she a lowly freshman—him taking notice of her. But now he didn’t interest her at all. She didn’t want conversation. She wanted to drink alone and wallow.
“How long you staying?”
“Depends.”
Marcus rambled about this person or that person, not noticing Molly hadn’t chimed in at all. His rude behavior, half facing her/half facing the room, rankled.
When the bartender strolled by, she asked for a glass of water since she’d drained her drink.
Thankfully, her hamburger arrived, and Marcus mumbled about letting her eat and left.
She’d finished half her burger when the barstool creaked again.
“Hey, cuz. I heard you were trolling in here.”
Brandi. She’d definitely end up with indigestion now. “Word gets around town almost as fast as you.”
“You’ve got a bitchy attitude these days, doncha?”
The hamburger turned to dust in her mouth. Still she managed to chew and swallow. “I’m just trying to get through this an hour at a time.”
Brandi rested an elbow on the bar. Her whiskey-laden breath stirred the air. “You like playing the grieving granddaughter? Think it’ll get you attention from guys like Marcus and Alan? Dream on. No matter what you look like now, they’ll picture you like everyone else in town does: a sad, fat, unwanted girl.”
Molly spun her chair and faced her cousin. “And they see you as you’ve always been? A skanky bitch with a mean mouth?”
“Watch yourself.”
“Or what? I’m beyond being bullied by you. In fact, I feel sorry for you. Talk about stunted growth. You haven’t changed since third grade. You can’t even come up with new insults.”
Her booze-dulled eyes narrowed. “So your backbone was hidden under all those rolls of fat.”
Molly laughed.
Marcus cleared his throat. Then he made the time-out sign. “Ladies, let’s set aside the family shit for one night.”
Where had he come from? And who the hell was he to butt his busted nose into their business?