Brenda winked at me and kissed Will’s cheek. “I should get to Maddie before she has a meltdown.”
I smirked at Will, who was swiping his mom’s lipstick off his cheek. “Mr. Mayor.”
“Fancy Pants,” he said, his tone almost civil.
An awkward silence hung between the two of us. After all, the last conversation we’d had involved me telling him to go to hell and his writing a nasty letter about me to the local press. It wasn’t conducive to casual chitchat.
There were things I wanted to say to Will. I was sorry I’d gone behind his back to reach my goals. I was sorry I’d made him think that a building was more important to me than the well-being of his friends and neighbors. I was sorry I’d passed out in his bed with a head injury. But I kept my mouth shut, because if I said one of those things, I would say them all and then some. And there was no better way to ruin my already tenuous hold on dignity than sad-girl, nonintoxicated word vomit.
“This turned out pretty nicely,” Will said, nodding toward the general splendor. “I know I haven’t really thanked you for anything you’ve done since you showed up, which is not an accident. But I really appreciate the work you put into this.”
“But just this?” I clarified.
“Well, it shows that you really care about the people here, not just getting your way,” he said carefully. “And I can see the good in that.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, staying silent, which seemed to make Will nervous. He asked, “What?”
“Just waiting for the other shoe to drop. You’re going to follow up with some sort of insult the moment I relax, I just know it.”
He sighed, rolling his eyes. “You wound me.”
“Not yet.”
The trio played the opening strains of “I Will Always Love You,” the good old-fashioned Dolly Parton version, made even more twangy by school superintendent Jack Smallman’s flinty tenor.
“Come on,” Will sighed, stretching his hand toward mine. “Let’s cut a rug. To make up for those dropped shoes.”
Before I could say no, he took my hand in his and led me to the blacktop dance floor. His fingers were warm and solid around mine. There was an awkward moment when I wasn’t sure where to put my hands. I hadn’t slow danced with anyone since high school. I just didn’t go to the sort of places that involved standing in one place and swaying. Will had no such problems, confidently pulling me into his arms and holding my right hand at the proper eye level.
He smelled so good, which was sort of weird when you consider how he’d spent the last few days. His red-plaid shirt was washed to softness against my palm. I wanted to lay my head there, to rub the fabric against my cheek. I could feel his breath feathering over my forehead and the warm assurance of his hand against the small of my back. My nipples tingled as he pressed me to his chest.
That was new.
“This is a good song,” I said absently, to take my mind off the whole nipple thing.
“I’ve never cared much for it,” he said.
I snickered. “You prefer the Bodyguard version?”
“No, it’s a song about leaving somebody. It’s a song about heartbreak for no good reason. It’s about pointless pain.”
The hurt and weight in his voice had my throat tightening up. Will knew a lot more about pain than I had given him credit for. Losing time with his dad, losing his chance to go to college. No wonder he seemed so bitter about the music hall. You didn’t just get over stuff like that. And here I was, dredging up all of those feelings every time I talked to him. I sucked as a human being.
So, of course, I had to crack a joke before I actually passed out as a result of emotional awkwardness. “Well, that’s way more philosophical than I usually get about songs I remember fondly from middle school dances.”
“Clearly you’ve never sat on the front porch with your buddies analyzing country songs over beers.”
“Not often, no.”
“We’ve been getting along pretty well lately,” he said. “Is it weird that I sort of miss arguing with you?”
“Not nearly as weird as the rumors that we’re engaged to be engaged. I thought you said you would have Fred’s wife do damage control.”
“She has,” he swore.
“And yet every time I go to the grocery store, Livvy Macon looks like she’s about to come after me with a box cutter.”
“You can’t control what people flap their gums over. It’s just gossip. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Well, I’m more sorry for you. It must be very frustrating to have those things being said about you with someone you don’t even like.”
He nudged me away a bit so I would be sure to see his face. “I never said that.”
“I am reasonably sure that you’ve said you don’t like me in several different ways.”
“No, I said that you’re frustrating and bossy and a complete pain in the ass to whoever is unfortunate enough to be on the wrong end of an argument with you,” he said. “I get you, I do. You see the world as this big museum and you’re runnin’ around tryin’ to make sure everybody can see it the way you do, to recognize that something was important or used to be beautiful. It’s nice that you try so hard to make sure everybody gets a little glimpse of that. But not everything is meant to be saved.”
“I have no idea how to respond to that,” I told him.
The corner of his mouth lifted. After another long silent moment, he added, “Now is the time most people would say something along the lines of ‘I like you, too’ or ‘I don’t dislike you, either.’”
“I’m not most people.”
“Trust me, I know that,” he muttered. “Come on, we have to find some common ground. There has to be something you like about me.”
“You have very nice teeth,” I offered, making his smile spread even farther.
“My teeth?”
“Good dental hygiene is very important to me.”
“Well, that’s something, at least,” he added, his optimistic tone a little off-putting.
I opened my mouth to attempt to say something witty and gracious, but all that came out was a squeak as Joe Bob snuck up behind me and declared that Will was hogging me and he was cutting in. As Joe Bob swept me across the floor, Will gave a hapless little wave.
And then, an elderly lady from the quilting society asked Will to dance. I took a few turns around the floor with the local fellas, Joe Bob, Fred, and Jordan Tompkins, an eight-year-old who thought I looked like Snow White. Eventually, Will and I lost track of each other as the dance floor filled up. I was about to plead blisters when an older African-American man with a broad white smile claimed a two-step.
“So I hear you’ve been spending a lot of time at the library with my sister,” he said as he led me in a wide circle.
“Mayor McGlory! I’m so glad you’re feeling better,” I said.
“Ah, former Mayor McGlory, thank you very much. The dang doctor just now took me off house arrest,” he muttered. “And don’t tell Will I said this, but I am glad he took the job over. I was getting too old for it.”
“You don’t look a day over forty,” I promised him.
He chuckled, shaking his salt-and-pepper head. “Oh, I like you. You’re a terrible liar, but I like you anyway.”
I amended, “Maybe forty-five.”
“Now you’re just being a smart aleck,” he chided. “So, I hear the library is getting some check the size of a barn door that’s going to pay for renovations?”
“She’s going to pick up the novelty check in Frankfort next week.” I nodded, thinking of the none-too-subtle check presentation Sadie had arranged with the people at Bothwell the previous morning. Bothwell was giving Miss Earlene three hundred thousand dollars, starting with a one-hundred-thousand-dollar initial payment. Miss Earlene was going to wear her good pink church suit and let Fred
drive her all the way to the state capital for her photo op. Since a good number of my prefabbed exhibit structures were being delivered that morning, I wasn’t able to go with her.
“I know she appreciates your help with the paperwork.”
“Miss Earlene has been a big help to me, so I wanted to repay her by helping her with the application process.”
“Well, that would mean a lot to Lurlene, seeing it all fixed up before she retires.”
I nodded. “I hope it works out— Wait, what did you call her?”
“Lurlene. Lil’ Earlene,” he said, his eyebrows arched at my sharp tone. “It’s been a pet name for her, ever since I was little.”
“She was Lurlene?” I asked, dumbfounded, as we slid to a halt in the middle of the dance floor.
“Yeah, she was Lurlene. I was Tom-Tom,” he said, pulling away from me slightly, as if my crazy was catching.
“She was Lurlene?” I repeated.
The elderly former mayor froze as I threw my arms around him and squealed like I’d just won the lottery. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou!”
As I scampered away in search of Miss Earlene, I heard Mr. McGlory mutter, “Strange girl.”
How could one little old woman give me the slip so easily when she didn’t even know I was looking for her? Heck, Miss Earlene was supposed to drive me home, but everyone I talked to had a different story. She was at the root beer booth. She was calling numbers at bingo. She was organizing the raffle slips, which, for some reason, the committee didn’t want me to see. I guessed because I was still an outsider and I shouldn’t see which families wanted to use the food bank services.
In my search of every nook and cranny of the town square, I could not pin down my wily geriatric prey. I was sitting in the parking lot of the Dinner Bell, doubting my own sleuthing skills, when Will pulled up in his truck and yelled out the window, “Hey, Miss Earlene asked me to give you a ride.”
I jogged toward the truck, mildly amused when Will reached across the cab to shove the door open for me. Chivalry was alive and well in Mud Creek.
“Congratulations on tracking her down,” I grumbled. “I haven’t seen her in hours.”
He turned toward Miss Martha’s house, carefully weaving his truck through the post-party traffic. “She’s been a busy little bee. She and Miss Martha are overwhelmed with those little info slips. They’re already holed up at the library creating spreadsheets.”
“The library!” I cried, like a recently thwarted Seinfeld. Will shot me an incredulous look. “I had something I needed to talk to her about.”
“Does she owe you money? A kidney?”
“Information,” I said.
“You’d think she would know by now how seriously you take your information.”
“You’d think so.” I sighed, leaning my head against the window.
“You did good tonight,” he told me.
I nodded, closing my eyes as he reached across the seat and lightly patted my hand. I smiled, knowing that if I opened my eyes, I would see him grinning at me through the milky green light from his dashboard. We rode the rest of the short drive in pleasant silence, and I’d almost drifted off by the time Will pulled to a stop in front of Miss Martha’s.
I blinked blearily up at the old house, shaking myself awake. Will squeezed my hand. “You know, I could just keep driving, take you to my place. Have a beer.”
My eyebrow quirked. “I think we both know that more than beer would be involved.”
Will gave me his most boyish and winsome smile. “If you insist.”
I rolled my eyes, leaning forward to give Will a peck on the cheek. He turned his head at the last minute and caught my lips with his. He made a soft growling noise into my mouth as I threaded my fingers through his short sandy hair. It bordered on a purr when I gave his scalp a tickling scratch. Somehow I ended up straddling his lap, butt pressed up against the steering wheel.
I will not have sex in Will’s truck. I will not have sex in Will’s truck. I will not have sex in Will’s truck.
If someone didn’t stop me, I was going to have sex in Will’s truck.
Easing back from him, I gave Will one last kiss on the tip of his nose. “Good night.”
“Good night,” he said with a sigh, eyes still closed. I climbed off his lap and scooted across the bench seat. “Wait, what— Good night?”
“Good night,” I said again, waving as I opened the truck door and slammed it behind me. “See you around.”
“You’re a cold woman, Bonnie Turkle,” he called after me.
“But you’ll respect me a lot more in the morning,” I called back.
“I’ll be taking cold showers till morning!”
13
In Which I Confront a Previously Unknown Musical Icon
Miss Earlene stood at the circulation desk, arms crossed, staring at the blueprints for the planned renovations and the giant cardboard Bothwell Foundation check for one hundred thousand dollars.
“You know, I always thought that those overblown novelty checks were tacky,” she said, pursing her lips. “But I’m thinking about taking this one home with me and snuggling up with it at night like a security blanket.”
I stared at Miss Earlene, this woman I’d spent weeks with, and tried to imagine her as a young, carefree girl spending her nights at McBride’s in the arms of a passionate young musician. I tried to imagine her without wrinkles or worry lines, the gray in her hair, or the bifocals that hung from her neck on a long silver chain. Miss Earlene in a pretty pink dancing dress and matching shoes.
I couldn’t see it.
“Bonnie, honey. You’re staring at me,” she said, swiping at her cheeks. “Do I have something on my face?”
“You were Lurlene.” It was both a question and a statement. An expression of the bewilderment I’d felt since Tommy McGlory dropped his clue-bomb on my head.
Miss Earlene hesitated, as if she was going to play it off as a silly nickname or deny it altogether. I looked her right in the eyes and squinted really hard. Because that’s about as threatening as my expressions got.
She sighed. “Technically, I was Earlene McGlory Jr. My mama was Big Earlene. I was Little Earlene.”
I gestured impatiently for her to continue.
“My mother, she wasn’t well,” Earlene said carefully. “Now we know that she was mentally ill, probably something like manic depression or bipolar disorder. Back then, if we ever talked about it, we just said she was high-strung or ‘not quite right.’ She would go months where she was fine. She had steady work, cleaning for some families in town. And then she’d have spells where I couldn’t get her out of bed for days. When she had those spells, it was up to me to take care of Tommy, to keep the bills paid up and the house running.
“When it got really bad, I was only ten or so myself, but I understood what had to be done and I did it. I wasn’t a normal girl. I was never frivolous or silly, because I didn’t have the time. For years, I was constantly juggling—the house, school, Tommy, trying to earn whatever I could sewing or tutoring the other kids from school—and if I let one of those balls drop, everything would fall apart. On her good days, my mother used to tease me about being her serious little bookworm, and it made me want to scream. Why did she think I was so serious? Why did she think I worked so hard? Because I couldn’t trust her to take care of us. The first time I really did anything just for myself was going to McBride’s on Teen Night. I didn’t even have any friends to sit with. The girls at school had given up on me a long time before. But I could sit up there in the balcony with the rest of the black folks and listen to the music. I could watch the couples dancing and feel like I was a part of it all. I went every two weeks, leaving Tommy with a neighbor lady. It was my time to myself, my time to be a normal girl. And one night when I was seventeen, Louis Gray came to play at McBride’s. You know those old movi
es, when two people spot each other across a crowded room and everything stands still? That was what it was like for us. He saw me from the stage and everything just seemed to grind to a halt. I couldn’t help but fall head over heels for him.
“Louis was a Yankee. He never could understand Southern accents, the way we strung all our words together. When we said ‘Lil’ Earlene,’ he heard ‘Lurlene.’ So it became a sort of pet name between the two of us. Tommy heard him use it once. We weren’t very careful one afternoon and Tommy saw us together. I introduced Louis as a friend from town. He was so sweet to my baby brother. I still had stars in my eyes and I thought that meant he’d be a good daddy when we started having kids of our own. Of course, that didn’t work out like I’d hoped. Anyway, Tommy picked up on the nickname and used it after Louis left.”
Miss Earlene plunked down in one of the reading chairs. “Louis wasn’t a big draw back then. He was really green. His band could keep a hell of a beat, but Louis couldn’t play to save his life. The label asked George to let Louis train up for a while, opening for other acts. He sulked about it, but he got a little better. And when he was sulking, a certain young lady used to bring him a Coke and tell him, ever so gently, to get over it.” She grinned triumphantly and pulled a photo out of the album.
“Get over it?” I laughed, looking down at a picture of a young Louis grinning at the camera, a pretty young girl pressed to his side.
“In more proper sixties language,” she assured me.
“Do you ever wish you’d gone with him?”
“I couldn’t leave Tommy alone with Mama,” she said. “I knew I did the right thing when I heard him sing that song. I’d broken his heart, but I gave him his voice. Somehow, he became a better musician because of what we had. How many people can say they were somebody’s muse? You know, I’ve never talked to anyone about this. I’m glad it was you who figured it out.”
I grinned at her, trying to wipe away the moisture gathering at the corners of my eyes. She patted my hand. “And who knows what could have happened? Maybe he never would have had the success he had without that silly song. Maybe we would have slowed down, gotten married, had a few kids. And maybe he would have started to resent me. Or hell, maybe he would have kept on touring and I could have been on the bus with him when it crashed and died myself. Louis wouldn’t have wanted that. There are a lot of maybes in life, honey, and if you let them haunt you, you’ll never have a life at all. I had a good life.”