Save a Truck, Ride a Redneck
Author: Molly Harper
Date: 2017-10-16 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Romance; Contemporary; Humour; Adult
Description: Molly Harper brings her signature “clever humor, snark, silliness, and endearing protagonists” ( Booklist ) to the charming small town of Lake Sackett, Georgia with the new Southern Eclectic series. Carl and Marianne were high school sweethearts, loving the way only teenagers can—with no thought to logic or pride, just a bone-headed, optimistic frenzy of unicorns and hormones. That was all they needed. Or so Carl thought. Scared of being stuck in Lake Sackett, Georgia, like so many of her friends—without a real shot at a future or achieving her own dreams—Marianne panicked and bolted to colleg
Publisher: Pocket Star

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For David, who is my unicorn

The McCready Family Tree

1

LAKE SACKETT, GEORGIA, MAY 2006

IF MARIANNE McCREADY drove any slower, the Georgia Highway Department was going to slap a “derelict” sticker on the back of her cute little red Mustang and call it a day.

Marianne slumped back in the plush leather seat, tapping her hands nervously against the sun-warmed steering wheel. It wasn’t that she didn’t love driving fast. Hell, under normal circumstances she’d be zipping through the north Georgia hills, yelling “Bette Davis Eyes” at the top of her lungs. But she wasn’t exactly in a hurry to reach Lake Sackett.

In fact, she’d used every excuse imaginable to avoid coming home for the summer. She liked her life in Athens. She liked her job, clerking for a respectable criminal law firm while she waited to start law school. Her landlord would have been more than happy to give her a three-month summer extension on her apartment until she had to move to Columbia, South Carolina, for law school. But here she was, driving back to her muddy little hometown, because Donna McCready could guilt-trip a deaf and blind man.

The Mustang was the embodiment of everything she loved about her life away from Lake Sackett. Her car was sleek. Her car was new. Her car smelled of the “Clean Cotton” Yankee Candle gel air freshener. Her car was rapidly approaching what looked like four white-tailed deer standing in the middle of the highway.

Oh, holy hell.

Gripping the steering wheel tight, Marianne quickly scanned the road. There was a ravine on her left and a solid wall of granite on her right. Every nerve ending in her brain screamed at her to slam on the brakes and jerk the wheel right to avoid the animals—who were responding the way deer normally responded in these situations: standing still and making absolutely no effort to avoid violent, car hood–related death. But instead, she forced herself to take her foot off the gas and keep the car on course. And she smashed her fist on the horn, honking like she’d never honked in her life.

Three of the deer seemed to see this noise as the herald of doom that it was and hauled ass toward the ravine, leaping out of sight. But one doe just stood there, near a blind curve that made it too dangerous to veer into the oncoming lane, staring directly at Marianne, making eye contact, practically daring her.

Marianne eyed the ravine to the left, the expanse of exposed stone to her right, and the deer, which would crash through her windshield and possibly smash her. And then she glanced at the ravine again, and the rocks, and the rapidly approaching deer.

“Sonofabiscuit.” Grunting, Marianne veered right, squealing as the passenger side scraped against the rocks. The rear of the car fishtailed as the impact slowed down her momentum. She waited for the airbag to deploy, but apparently she wasn’t traveling fast enough for the car to get indignant about a little contact with a mountain. Marianne hit the brakes as hard as she dared, slowing the car without sliding toward the drop-off.

If she made it, she was going to write a very stern letter about the lack of guardrails to . . . whoever handled that sort of thing. While she was mentally composing that letter, at the very last minute, the stupid doe blithely stepped out of the way.

Meanwhile, Marianne’s car was grinding against the rock like a day-shift stripper. The front tire buckled under and Marianne jerked forward in her seat as the car skidded to a stop. Outside the window, the doe was blinking innocently at her through the glass. Marianne forced her hands to release their white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, an effort made easier by the sweat slicking her palms. She slid the gearshift into park, not that it mattered much at this point. The deer cantered across the road and daintily picked her way into the ravine to join her friends.

“You better run, you knock-kneed bitch!” Marianne hollered after the deer. She groaned, flopping her head against the steering wheel. And then she remembered that the airbag still hadn’t deployed, so she very slowly sat back in her seat. And then pushed the button to move the seat backward, until she was practically laying her head against the backseat. Though the engine had whined to a stop, something clanged under the hood with a loud yaawwwrllll. White smoke billowed over her windshield in a thick curtain.

Marianne had just murdered her car for a stupid deer, who didn’t even appreciate the sacrifice she’d made.

“Dammit,” she muttered, bouncing her head against the headrest. “Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.”

For just a second, she wondered if she could restart the engine and drive as far as town like this.

And then, the airbag burst out of her steering wheel with a deafening POP. Marianne shrieked and covered her face with her hands.

That would be a no, then.

She shook out her trembling fingers, forcing deep breaths into her lungs. She was okay. She wasn’t hurt. She was okay. She was shaky from adrenaline and unprocessed panic, but she was okay.

She glanced around for a mile marker or a landmark. At the very least, she knew she was too far to walk to town in her cute little Steve Madden heels. And with the way the roads twisted and turned, it wasn’t really safe to walk anyway. Tourists didn’t exactly know how to handle themselves on the curves in rental vehicles.

Marianne fumbled for her purse, trying to feel for her cell phone. Maybe she could catch Duffy, or her father, if he wasn’t busy with a procedure. Duffy had all kinds of fancy towing hookups on his truck for hauling his bass boat around. Surely it could handle her little sports car. Besides, a ride into town with Duffy would give her a chance to suss out exactly how pissy the rest of the family was going to be about the fact that Marianne hadn’t been home since her annual drive-by Christmas visit. And they could discuss Duffy’s marriage, which, honestly, could occupy their conversation all the way to the Canadian border.

Marianne prayed that her phone got some reception out here in the hills, because service was about as reliable as secondhand lightbulbs. To her relief, the call actually connected and rang. She felt like she was able to breathe for the first time since seeing the damn deer.

“Yello,” Duffy drawled in the phone. Marianne rolled her eyes, though there was a small smile quirking her lips. Duffy only answered that way for family.

“Duff, it’s Manny. I was on Route 19, headin’ your way. I’m not even to Norm Hightower’s place, and my car broke down.”

“What? I thought that thing was brand-new.”

“Well, it didn’t so much break down as I hit something.”

“Are you okay?” Duffy asked, his voice spiking with anxiety.

“I’m fine, I promise. I’m fine.”

“Was it a deer?” he asked. “They’re running crazy right now, going after extra food. Fawning’s got ’em all stirred up. They don’t even care about daylight.”

“I did not hit a deer. I decidedly didn’t hit the damn deer,” she muttered, throwing a baleful look toward the ravine.

“What in the hell does that mean?” Duffy demanded.

“Duffy, just come out here and help your sister. Bring the truck.”

“But are you okay?” he asked one more time.

“I’m fine, not a scratch. My car is a different story. Just bring the truck.”

“All right, I’ll be there as quick as I can. Just sit tight.”

“Okay.” Marianne ended the call and flopped her head back against the seat. “Dammit.”

Now that the adrenaline and relief were wearing off, the full impact of what had just happened washed over her in a cold, clammy wave. Despite the Georgia heat creeping into the car, she shivered and rubbed her hands over her bare arms.

She was lucky she’d gotten through the impact relatively unscathed. She knew several people from Lake Sackett who had been seriously injured in collisions with deer. Poor Ezra Newcomb had been killed when a deer crashed through his windshield a week after their high school graduation. This could have been so much worse.

On a shallower note, her car was deader than a doornail. Her parents had given her half of the down payment as a college graduation present. Because, even though they could afford to give her the whole car, they insisted that monthly payments would make her value it more.

It was just the way the McCreadys operated. McCready kids were expected to work hard, to earn the legacy their great-grandfathers had left. Marianne didn’t know how the McCreadys handled replacing cars, because no one in her family had ever totaled a car over a damn deer. (She was never going to be able to think the word deer without damn attached to it somehow.) She had some savings but definitely not enough to replace a brand-new car. This was not going to be the summer she envisioned, leisurely working her way through the recommended reading list for first-year law students in between lake outings with her brother. She was probably going to end up slinging fried breakfast sticks in the Snack Shack for Aunt Leslie, praying the tips were enough to buy her a new fender.

An hour went by and Marianne rolled down all four windows to counter the bone-softening heat. She tried to focus on the landscape, the hilly views so familiar from her childhood. She could almost see the expanse of Lake Sackett in the distance. But even without the visual, she could picture the odd fern shape of the inlets carving through the county.

She knew her reluctance to come home was peculiar. It wasn’t as if Lake Sackett was a pit. The water was always clean, clear, and just the right temperature for swimming. The town’s tourism business thrived on its beautiful lake, ample scenic shorelines, and rolling green hills. People flocked from all over the Southeast to fish, sail, and camp, which kept locals employed.

But growing up, Marianne had been determined, like all small-town girls terrified of turning out like their mothers, to leave Lake Sackett in her rearview at the first opportunity. She craved the hustle and bustle of a city with more than two stoplights and businesses that stayed open past nine. She’d refused to be a cliché, like poor Becky Summat, who had to shop in the maternity section for her prom gown. Marianne refused not to have options or choices.

And coming from one of the more prominent families in town hadn’t made growing up in Lake Sackett any easier. She hated the fact that she couldn’t have an embarrassing moment without it being witnessed by ten people who would call her mother before Marianne got home. She hated that she couldn’t gas up her car or shop for condoms without running into someone she’d gone to grade school with. Half of the appeal of attending University of Georgia had been the anonymity. She wanted a job and a life she’d earned herself, not gotten because her boss knew her father or was distantly related to her mother. And of course, there was the tiny stigma attached to being the daughter of the town funeral director.

She was proud of what she’d accomplished. She’d just graduated with her prelaw degree and had an early acceptance into University of South Carolina’s law program. She had her first semester’s classes picked out. She’d found an apartment. She’d even found a Columbia firm that would be willing to take her on as a clerk while she was in school, based on her former boss’s recommendation. Her seven-year plan was blossoming into the kind of life she’d always wanted.

But lately, she’d had to work harder to drum up the enthusiasm for law school. Somehow, waiting another three years to start her professional life seemed to stretch what she wanted out of her reach. When she thought about what she loved doing, it was research. She loved sinking up to her elbows in the law library and finding the key piece of information that was going to help the client. She was less excited about representing accident victims or standing in front of a jury delivering impassioned speeches. But she’d made these plans, cultivated them carefully from nothing, even when her family objected. So she was sticking with them: law school, a great job, a life in a busy, vibrant city where she could grocery-shop anonymously.

Marianne swiped at the sweat gathering on her forehead. She’d already stripped down to her jeans and camisole. Anything else and she’d get arrested for indecent exposure. Then again, the Sackett County Jail had air-conditioning, so maybe it would be worth it.

True to Lake Sackett traffic patterns, not one vehicle had passed by. It was a Sunday afternoon. The weekend people arrived on Fridays and left town before lunch on Sunday. Summer people tended to wait until Thursdays to head into town to stock up on groceries and booze. And locals tried to stay put until Labor Day, when they got their town back.

Marianne pulled her phone out of her purse and checked the time again. She hit REDIAL and was less charmed by Duffy’s familiar greeting.

“Duffy, where are you? I’m sweatin’ my ass cheeks off out here,” Marianne said. “When you finally decide to grace me with your presence, can you bring me a Coke? I’m dyin’ of thirst.”

“I’m sorry, Manny, I got caught up at work. But don’t worry. Help is on the way.”

Marianne was not at all charmed by the nickname Duffy had used since they were toddlers. It was too damn humid for sisterly affection. “So, did you send Daddy?”

“Not exactly.”

And that’s when Marianne saw the old red tow rig barreling up the hill, the faint strains of Elvis echoing off the rocks.

Marianne’s posture sagged, her bare shoulders sticking to the leather of the driver’s seat. “McDuff Marion McCready, you didn’t.”

“Hey, hey, don’t bring my middle name into this!”

“Duffy,” she growled.

“You said you were fine! Look, I had some dentist from Buckhead hemmin’ and hawin’ over a tackle set and I couldn’t leave the shop,” Duffy cried. “And Dad’s busy with Oscar Gaskill, so it was either send Carl or you wait for another couple of hours.”

“Aw, Mr. Oscar died?” Marianne sighed.

“Yeah, I’m sorry. I didn’t think to call you. The service is tomorrow.”

Mr. Gaskill had been the only math teacher who’d been able to coax her into an A average during her twelve years in the county’s public schools. He’d been quirky and unorthodox in his teaching methods, often speaking in the third person when complimenting students’ precalculus work. Marianne had adored him. And Duffy didn’t think to call her?

Marianne pursed her lips, blowing a breath through her nose.

And then Carl Dawson climbed out of the wrecker.

“Duffy, I’m gonna murder you.”

“Why?” Her brother’s tone was far too innocent to be genuine.

“I’m smart enough to use the crematory and get away with it.”

Duffy scoffed. “You would have to have Dad help you. He’d never—”

Marianne jammed her thumb against the cell phone so hard she thought she’d crack the screen, and glared across the road.

Carl Dawson.

The embodiment of all the reasons she’d left Lake Sackett in the first place stepped down from his towing rig and sauntered toward her car. It was wrong for a man’s arms to be that attractive. The rest of him was plenty pleasant to look at, too: a worn Braves baseball cap covered longish light brown hair framing a face carved in merciless angles; a long, narrow nose hovered over thin lips that looked like they’d never once lifted upward. His default expression was a scowl, one that she used to spend hours coaxing off his face.

But the arms.

Carl’s arms were straight off the covers of the Harlequin novels her grandma kept stashed in her sewing box. Every sinew of his biceps was sharply defined and that shouldn’t have been hot, but when streaked with engine grease and sweat it made Marianne’s knees go weak. He wore a Mason Towing T-shirt under a plaid button-down—both with the sleeves ripped off—and jeans that had seen much better days, which had been his uniform in high school. But unlike most of their classmates (according to the Facebook evidence), Carl seemed to have grown into his lean, rawboned looks without the semi-adult awkward phase.

Meanwhile, Marianne had indulged in pasta three times that week and skipped Pilates.

Life was just not fair.

Marianne resisted the urge to fluff her thick chestnut hair before stepping out of the car. “Hello, Carl.”

Carl nodded sharply. His hair shifted, giving her a glimpse of eyes the calm, clear green seen only in screensaver shots of the Caribbean. “Hey.”

A tiny splinter of hurt wedged its way under Marianne’s skin. Really? “Hey?” That was it? He hadn’t seen her in four years, not since she’d left him sitting on the edge of Deer Tick Bay in his drawers, and he wasn’t even looking at her. Her considerable cleavage was on full display in this camisole, and he was staring at her car.

She cleared her throat, trying to draw his attention away from her Mustang. “How are you?”

“I’m fine.” His gravelly drawl made gooseflesh stand up on her arms, despite the waves of bone-melting warmth rising off the pavement.

Marianne chin-pointed toward his shirt. “I see you’re still working for Mason’s.”

“Bought it.”

Marianne blinked. Carl couldn’t introduce two nickels to each other when they were kids. How in the hell had he managed to buy Wendall Mason’s towing garage? She cleared her throat. “And you didn’t change the name?”

“Nah.”

“Because of customer loyalty?” she guessed.

“Yep.”

Marianne’s lips pinched together. Carl had never been a man of many words, but this complete nonreaction thing was wearing on her last damn nerve. Normally her nerves were a little more plentiful and resilient, but between the deer and the heat—and the fact that Carl didn’t seem to be at all affected by seeing her again—she was done with this whole afternoon. She threw her hands up in the air. “Really?”

Carl frowned and actually looked at her for the first time since he’d gotten out of his truck. “What?”

“It’s been four years and that’s all you have to say to me? One-syllable answers?”

Carl’s expression soured. “Well, shucks, ma’am,” he drawled in an exaggerated accent. “I didn’t run off to some fancy school and learn ten-dollar words, so ‘one-syllable answers’ is all I got in my back pocket.”

She muttered, “I think I liked ‘hey’ better.”

“Thought you might.” He snorted, turning to her hobbled vehicle. He laid a reverent hand on the bright red paint. “Now, why in the hell would you do this to such a beautiful machine?”

“I was trying to avoid a deer.”

Carl nodded. “That’d do it.”

“Can you fix it?”

“Sure, once I get the parts, which’ll take a while.”

“How long is ‘a while’?”

Carl jerked his shoulders. “A while.”

Marianne attempted to melt Carl’s stupid, beautiful face with the power of her mind. It didn’t work.

“You wanna wait in the truck while I hook this up?” He wagged his head toward the tow truck.

Marianne nodded, crossing to the early-model Ford. The cab of the truck smelled like Carl, leather and engine oil and spearmint gum. It was worn but meticulously clean, like everything else he owned. And it was air-conditioned, which was enough to make Marianne tear up a little in gratitude. She paused at the sight of a plastic Elvis dangling from his rearview mirror, jointed hips swiveling. It had hung in this place of honor in all of Carl’s vehicles, from the moment she’d presented it to him after a family trip to Memphis when she was sixteen. She remembered how touched he’d been that she’d thought of him while she was at Graceland. He’d held on to it all these years, even after she’d left him.

Shaking her head, she glanced down at the console. He probably kept it because he was such an Elvis fanatic, she told herself. He’d probably forgotten she was the one to give it to him. There was a bottle of Coke in the cup holder, beaded with condensation, and as much as she wanted to pour it down her gullet, she knew they were not on spit-sharing terms. Not anymore, at least.

She cranked the AC as high as possible and tilted her head back against the headrest. She closed her eyes, and while it was the last thing she wanted to think about, her mind drifted back to that afternoon on Deer Tick Bay. She’d been just a few days away from leaving for UGA. She had been struggling all summer, trying to figure out a way to make a long-distance relationship with Carl work. She’d heard cautionary tales about hometown boyfriends from older girls at her campus orientation, but she’d been determined to remain Carl’s girlfriend. She didn’t mind missing out on parties or frat boys if it meant keeping Carl’s rough hands and sweet words in her life.

And then that bitch, Sara Lee Cooper, marched into the Snack Shack and informed her that she’d seen Carl looking at engagement rings at a pawnshop in Dahlonega. Marianne had promptly run out of the shack and thrown up off the dock, which meant she didn’t have to do much reflecting on her choice. She couldn’t marry Carl. Not then, not in a few years; she wasn’t ready. She couldn’t give up college. The idea of being stuck in Lake Sackett, having kids and stretching Carl’s salary as an apprentice mechanic with double coupons and home canning? She wanted to throw up all over again.

So, the next day, she’d met him at their spot on Deer Tick Bay, knowing that she had to break things off with him, feeling like the most selfish person in the world. He’d been stripping when she anchored her little johnboat near his kayak. It wasn’t presumptuous. They’d been having regular, doubly safe sex on the banks of this inlet for the better part of the year. He’d been down to his skivvies and had his socks in his hands when she climbed out of the boat and told him, “I can’t.”

Carl pulled that little half smile that he saved for her. “Not up for it? That’s all right. Wanna do some fishin’ instead?”

Marianne felt the mud of the shoreline soaking through her tennis shoes. That smile. That smile was going to be burned into her brain for years to come. Carl didn’t open up to people. It had taken her years to get him to trust her enough to tell her anything real about himself, much less believe that she wanted to be with him. And she was about to wipe that smile off his face for completely selfish reasons.

She was going to hell in a handcart.

Marianne took a deep breath and worked to keep her expression neutral. “No, I mean, I can’t leave for school still datin’ you. I can’t keep seein’ you, Carl. We need to end things.”

The smile died a slow death, leaching from his face. Marianne felt a distinct snap inside her chest that she was pretty sure was her heart breaking, and then felt that much guiltier for thinking about her own pain when she was the one hurting Carl.

“I thought you didn’t want to break up just because you were leavin’ for school,” Carl bit out, surprisingly authoritative for a guy standing in waist-high grass in his tighty-whities. “When you got in, I said maybe we should break up, and you said no, that you wanted to be with me, and now you don’t? What happened? Did I do somethin’? Did your daddy say somethin’? What the hell is going on?”

“I just realized, I don’t want to miss out on everything college has to offer. You know, meetin’ new people and havin’ fun,” she said, trying so hard to keep her tone light that it made her throat ache. “How am I supposed to go out with friends if I’m stuck in my dorm room, waitin’ for you to call? If I’m worryin’ every second about whether it would hurt your feelin’s that I’m at a party or talkin’ to some other guy? I just think we have our whole lives ahead of us, Carl, and it was silly of me to try to cling to you like some sort of security blankie. It was wrong. And I’m sorry.”

“Oh, you’re sorry, all right. You’re just some sorry, stuck-up little princess who got bored a’ slummin’ it, and now you’re trying to paint it up all fancy. You got what you wanted from me and now you’re done. That’s just fine with me.”

“Don’t do that,” Marianne shot back. “Don’t pull the ‘spoiled rich girl card’ with me. I told you that I’ve never cared about your family or where you come from, and nobody from my family cares about that, either.”

“Your daddy sure the hell does!”

“My daddy hasn’t liked anyone I’ve ever dated. I could be dating a real-life prince and he would say His Highness wasn’t good enough for me. It’s like the Southern father’s code. Look, Carl, this is what’s supposed to happen with high school sweethearts. People don’t marry their first loves and live happily ever after. This doesn’t have to be ugly.”

“You made it ugly. You acted like you cared. You made me believe . . . aw, hell, what does it matter? You wanna go off and be some co-ed bimbo, fine. Go. I’m not gonna stop you.”

“That’s not fair.”

“No, what’s not fair is you callin’ me your ‘first love’ when you don’t give a damn about me. Just go.”

“Carl.” She sighed.

“GO!” he roared.

Marianne was back on her own boat in two strides. She started the outboard by muscle memory alone, because she for damn sure couldn’t see through the tears in her eyes. She’d wept through packing, telling her parents that it was just presemester nerves, which she also blamed when she cried through moving into her dorm at UGA.

Carl didn’t contact her once, and she thought maybe that hurt more than anything. She stuck it out at UGA, though, because she wasn’t about to waste the heartache she was suffering. She made friends with the girls in her dorm. She threw herself into classes and campus activities. She barely dated. She tried more than a few times, but she just never clicked with anyone.

They were too polished and practiced; too sweet and not enough—

Carl opened the door to the tow truck, jarring Marianne back into the present. She avoided yelping like a scalded cat, but it was a near thing.

“We’ll have to drive slow back to town, or else we’ll do more damage to your suspension.”

“Oh,” she said, pursing her lips. “Great.”

2

CARL PUT THE truck into gear and slowly turned the rig toward town. He kept his eyes on the road, not speaking. His hands were still rough and still about three shades darker than the rest of him. And he appeared to be white-knuckling the wheel. The only time he let go was to direct the air vents to blow on her.

Marianne cleared her throat and stared out the window, watching the hills of Sackett County roll by. “So . . .”

That was all she had. One tiny syllable filling up the Grand Canyon of awkwardness between them. Pathetic. The problem was an opening line. What exactly was she supposed to say here? Was there a safe subject to land on when your last memory of someone was leaving him standing with his socks in his hands and his heart in the dirt? It felt condescending to ask how he was “really” doing. He couldn’t truly be fine, right? He had to be holding on to some anger at her, given the way she’d left things. And while the “aw, shucks, ma’am” routine had been a little testy, it didn’t fit the level of bitterness she’d expected—somewhere around the level of Aunt Leslie’s nasty-ass coffee.

It was part of the reason she’d kept visits home so brief over the last few years; taking every summer work program and internship she could find so she could avoid running into him in town. She knew she deserved his resentment and she didn’t want to give him the chance to vent it all over her. But what if he wasn’t affected at all? Somehow that would be so much worse, knowing that she’d been alone in her heartbreak while he drank her away with some skank down at Dwight Newcome’s party pier.

No. This was fine. Polite and distant was the way to go. She didn’t need some big dramatic scene to give her closure or heal her inner self. She was a McCready, dammit. Her family practically invented getting through unpleasant situations with a smile and a spontaneously baked Bundt cake. She could get through this summer with a little grace and then bolt to Columbia with most of her pride intact. Maybe she could have someone else fix her car so she didn’t have to see him again. There had to be another garage somewhere close . . . that she hadn’t heard about in her eighteen years of living in Lake Sackett . . .

Carl pressed PLAY on the car stereo. The CD player, about thirty years after-market compared to the rest of the truck, began playing “Don’t Leave Me Now.” Frowning, Carl reached forward and hit the SKIP button. The opening bars of “Don’t Be Cruel” blared out of the speakers. Carl cleared his throat and hit the SKIP button again, landing on “Don’t.”

Was this some sort of hellish mix CD of all the plaintive Elvis songs that started with don’t?

“I don’t need music,” she said.

“Okay,” Carl immediately agreed and switched off the stereo. “So, your brother said you got into another college? How much college does one person need?”

She thought maybe Carl didn’t mean to sound both resentful and snarky—no, scratch that, that was probably exactly how he meant to sound. She cleared her throat. “Uh, yeah, I got into law school. And if that one person wants to be a lawyer, a couple more years.”

“You’re gonna be a lawyer?”

“That’s the plan,” she said. “When did you buy the garage?”

“Few years ago. Wendall moved down to Florida to be with his grandkids. Sold it cheap.”

Marianne suppressed a smile. Wendall Mason had always had a soft spot for Carl. The Dawsons were one of the more “colorful” families in Lake Sackett. J. R. Dawson hadn’t been seen since Mrs. Dawson gave birth to Carl’s little sister, Cheyenne. He’d claimed his virile manliness couldn’t have possibly produced a girl, so Mrs. Dawson must have cheated. Carl’s older brother, Ricky, had been arrested for everything from selling oregano packaged as marijuana to high school kids to posing as a clergyman to get free admission to a Braves game. When Cheyenne was seventeen, she ran away with a Tilt-A-Whirl operator from a traveling carnival.

While it was easy to laugh away their wacky dysfunction, the Dawsons were poor at a level only seen in Faulkner stories. As in, they were always first on the Baptist church’s Christmas basket list. As in, they’d eaten animals Ricky hit with his truck. As in, Carl had one pair of jeans per school year and his mama told him to “try not to grow.” Carl once confided in Marianne that he hadn’t known what having a full stomach felt like until Duffy had invited him over for dinner.

While Junior had held back from the boy, Carl had pretty much been adopted by the other McCreadys. Marianne watched him go from a skittish, suspicious kid to someone who hugged voluntarily and easily. The McCreadys fed him, invited him over for holidays, tutored him through his apprenticeship tests. No one in Carl’s own family had encouraged him to graduate from high school. Hell, no one had encouraged him to have a job. They just wanted him out of the house as quick as possible.

At least she hadn’t ruined that when she left. She knew that Carl had continued to attend those barbecues and family parties and weekend fishing trips after she moved away. At first she’d felt a small sense of betrayal, like her family had taken his side in the breakup. But they never tried to force her back into contact with him—with the obvious exception of Duffy’s current shenanigans. They didn’t subtly drop him into conversation . . . after she’d asked them not to . . . for the third time. Carl needed the McCreadys more than she did, and it wasn’t like she was in Lake Sackett to spend time with them anyway. And his hanging around gave her the excuse she needed not to come home. Win-win.

And the truck had been silent for at least three minutes.

She cleared her throat again. “So where are you livin’ these days?”

“Well, Wendall threw his house into the deal when I bought the garage. He didn’t want some rich outsider buyin’ it and turnin’ it into a weekend place.”

“That big old house on Peachtree?” she exclaimed.

Wendall’s mother, Verna Chapman, had been the youngest and much adored daughter of the former mayor of Lake Sackett. He’d been dismayed when his baby girl married a grease monkey by the name of Wally Mason—quite happily by all accounts, even if she had been cut off from daddy’s money. Mayor Chapman’s biblical disownment was pointless since Wendall’s maiden aunts ended up leaving him the sprawling clay-brick antebellum home before he married. Marianne remembered it as a crumbling showplace when she was a kid, all molting paint and sagging eaves, the sort of house that popped up on Scooby-Doo.

Carl nodded. “It’s not in great shape. Duffy’s helping me fix it up on weekends when he has time. The two of us spend more time pickin’ splinters out of our hind ends than anything else.”

“Duffy’s never exactly been handy,” Marianne said with a snort.

“Jackass damn near took off his own head with a belt sander.”

“That sounds about right.” Marianne nodded. “It’s nice, though, that the two of you stayed friends. I hardly keep in touch with anyone from high school.”

“Mm-hmm.” Carl managed to fit more judginess in two noncommittal syllables than Tootie’s entire quilting guild could fit in an afternoon. But she didn’t have time to call him on it because they were pulling into the bumpy gravel drive of the McCready compound. She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until she exhaled at the sight of her grandparents’ large old cabin with its concrete fish and crowded flower boxes.

McCreadys had lived in Sackett County since before the river was dammed to create the lake. Marianne’s family was rooted in a pair of brothers, John and Earl Jr., born to farmers who were—honestly—never that good at farming. When Earl Jr. came home from World War I, missing several toes and half an ass cheek, he built a bait shack on the shore of the lake, selling worms and homemade lemonade and sandwiches that his wife, Kate, made. John had always been more interested in carpentry than fishing, and started making very sturdy cabinets for a living. The Spanish flu epidemic hit Lake Sackett in 1918, taking out a good portion of the population, and John had to turn his cabinet-making skills to making coffins.

With so many people ordering caskets, John needed more space to work, and Earl let him use the back of his bait shack as a workshop. The two couples had always gotten along well. The bait shop grew, because people loved Kate’s cooking and Earl’s fishing advice. And the coffin business took off, because death is a recession-proof industry. The following generations added to the business over time, offering full funeral services, guided fishing tours, snacks, and tackle.

And now several generations of their descendants lived on the shore of Lake Sackett, where the original McCready homestead stood, in a series of cabins centered around Marianne’s grandparents’ place. It was a little strange sometimes, having her whole extended family live within shouting distance. But for the most part, it worked. You knocked before barging into someone’s house. You kept all but the most pointed opinions to yourself. Everybody understood that you didn’t leave your front door open, because Aunt Tootie’s dogs would run in; that you didn’t go into Uncle Stan’s abandoned cabin because it was haunted by the ghosts of his broken marriage; and that you never, ever, ate Donna’s peach cobbler, because it was sadness in Pyrex form.

Marianne had almost relaxed into the idea of being glad to be home, imagining that she could even smell the scent of roasting meat wafting through the truck’s vents. But then she saw the banner stretched from her grandparents’ cabin to her parents’, reading WELCOME HOME, MARIANNE in enormous red glitter letters.

“Oh, no.”

As Carl carefully ferried her Mustang over the final rise in the driveway, she saw huge trestle tables arranged in front of her grandparents’ cabin, balloons, streamers—her aunts and uncles milling around with big platters of food. And, oh, hell, her grandpa brought out the kegerator.

Her whole family had gathered together for a pig smoke.

“Aw, come on, you knew they wouldn’t let you come back without a party,” Carl told her.

“I know, but it’s everybody, all at once, and I did just ram my car into a mountain to avoid hitting a damn deer. I’m in shock here.”

“Duff says you haven’t had a good visit home in years. Your family’s happy to see you. Stop being a precious pain in the ass about it and be grateful.”

“Thank you for your wisdom, redneck Oprah,” she muttered. When she realized how close they were getting to the house, she reached out to touch his arm. His firm, smooth, strong arm, which was just as warm and solid as she remembered.

Focus, McCready.

“Do me a favor. Stop here. Don’t pull the car any closer. I don’t want everybody seeing the damage and freaking out.”

Carl slowed the truck, staring down at her hand on his arm and frowning. She curled her fingers into a fist and slowly pulled her arm back. “Sorry.”

Carl nodded sharply, bringing the truck to a stop a good forty yards from the family. Marianne climbed down from the truck while Carl got out and loped back around to the Mustang’s trunk, where he dragged Marianne’s luggage out.

“I can get that,” she protested as her family scrambled up the hill.

“Not near as fast as I can,” he said, closing the trunk and tossing her a smaller duffel. He picked up her two largest suitcases and used those powerful arms to haul them toward her approaching relatives.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“I just don’t want to see Miss Tootie upset,” he grumbled as they trudged over the rise.

“Butterbean!” Her grandfather, E.J.J., hobbled on his bad knee, throwing his arms wide as he scooped her into a hug. Marianne grinned against his chest. Silver-haired and gap-toothed, her grandpa was a veritable giant, a little stooped and creaky but still big and sturdy as a barn. He couldn’t lift her off the ground like he used to, but the smell of Old Spice and peppermint was comforting.

“Hey, Grandpa,” she said, sighing.

“Did you try to take out the deer population of Sackett County all on your lonesome?”

Several wet noses snuffled against Marianne’s ankles. She didn’t have to look down to know it was the first wave of the ever-cycling pack of dogs Tootie kept. They were like her canine hype men. “Well, you never let me hunt when I was a kid.”

“That was for the safety of the human population of Sackett County.” Another pair of arms dragged her out of E.J.J.’s and pulled her close. Duffy, just as tall and rangy as their grandfather, but with considerably less stooping and a head full of wavy reddish-brown hair. “Your aim sucks.”

“Where’s Daddy?”

“As soon as he got done with Mr. Gaskill, he got a call from the sheriff. Delia Turnbow slipped and fell gettin’ out of the shower this mornin’. Her daughter went over to check on her after she didn’t answer her phone, but it was too late,” Duffy said. “He’s taking care of her now but promised he and Frankie will be back before we eat.”

“Poor Miss Delia.” She sighed.

“Dad was real sorry, but you know his motto.”

“ ‘Death doesn’t care about people or their plans,’ ” they said together as Duffy gave her one last squeeze.

“It’s good that you’re home, Manny.”

She hugged her brother tighter. Duffy hadn’t been able to master the subtleties of Marianne as a toddler, and had garbled her name into Manny. She immediately regretted the closer hug as his thick beard scratched against her cheek.

“Gah, stop, it’s like being hugged by Sasquatch.” Marianne feigned disgust while shoving him away. She patted her brother’s cheek, taking in his bright blue eyes, twinkling with sibling-torturing amusement. She waggled her hand at his chin. “You have about half a barbecue sandwich stuck in there.”

Duffy pulled back to smack at his gingery beard, knocking away imaginary crumbs.

“Oh, Duffy, you fall for that every time,” an irritated feminine voice sounded behind him.

Behind her, Carl snickered. While most of their classmates had whimsical nicknames for their grandparents that grated on the ear like a bad gospel choir solo—Mawmaw, Peepaw, Meemaw—Duffy and Marianne had never called their grandmother anything but her nickname. Because when your grandmother went by Tootie, you really didn’t need to dress it up.

Tootie was wearing a bright pink-and-green plaid work shirt and a pair of extreme mom jeans. Her fluffy cloud of white hair framed her former-china-doll face. As usual, she was accompanied by a half dozen dogs of all breeds and sizes, all crowding around her legs, snuffling, sniffing, barking. The woman had always been a little odd about her dogs. It had started with a beagle-mix mutt she’d found on the side of the road when Junior was a kid. She’d just kept adding to her pack until it reached biblical proportions.

Tootie wasn’t a hoarder, per se; all the animals were clean and well fed and received regular vet care. There were just so many of them, given the run of the McCready property.

“Still trying to assemble a redneck dogsled team?”

“Well, I have to uphold my reputation as the small-town crazy lady.”

“To be honest, Tootie, you kind of settled into your eccentric senior phase a little early.”

“You’ve always been a smartass.” Tootie pulled Marianne’s hands into hers. “Let me look at you.”

Marianne pursed her lips, trying not to shiver under the glaucomic scrutiny. “You’re too skinny. The big city just starved the paddin’ right off of you.”

“Nope, that was an intentional combination of avoiding carbs and doing Pilates.”

“You’re not too old for me to make you cut a switch,” Tootie told her.

“Oh, you’ve never spanked any of us and you know it,” Marianne told her.

“Yeah, but a little threatenin’ is good for kids. Keeps ’em guessin’.”

“This is why you’re not allowed to supervise the church nursery anymore.”

“Why’d y’all park up there?” Tootie demanded, pointing to the front end of Carl’s rig.

Carl rubbed a large hand against the back of his neck. “It’s too hard to turn the truck around with a car hooked up to it, so I stopped up there.”

Marianne flashed him the briefest of grateful smiles.

Tootie shrugged. “Carl, shug, I made you up a plate,” she said, taking a carefully wrapped packet of food from Marianne’s aunt Leslie. A small, compact woman with fading strawberry-blond hair, Leslie was one of the few relatives Marianne had who didn’t say much unless provoked. She kissed Marianne on the cheek and gave her a wink.

“Thank you, Miss Tootie,” Carl said, his tanned cheeks going ruddy.

“Duffy said you had to work today and I didn’t want you going hungry. I put some of my special potato salad in there. And some of Leslie’s ‘cornbread.’ ” Tootie’s thin lips curled into a smirk around her too-white-to-be-real teeth.

“You don’t have to say the word ‘cornbread’ like that, Tootie,” Leslie grumbled.

“I’m just sayin’—” Tootie began.

Marianne stood between them and held up her hands like a traffic director. “Nope, no, we’re not going to have the ‘when you add sugar it becomes cake’ argument again. I just got home. I don’t have the strength.”

“Marianne, I’ll be heading out,” Carl said before Tootie wrapped him up in one of her surprisingly strong bear hugs.

Marianne swallowed heavily, realizing it was the first time he’d spoken her name that day. Her eyes darted toward his face as he was released from Tootie’s grandmaternal grip. He wasn’t smiling or frowning . . . or anything, really; his expression was absolutely neutral, which was decidedly unhelpful. “I’ll get an estimate together for you tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” she said, trying to make her own face just as unreadable.

Carl walked away, raising his hand by way of a good-bye. And Marianne couldn’t help but feel the tiniest bit hurt at being dismissed with so little energy. She knew she probably deserved it, but it didn’t stop the sting. As her family members shouted their good-byes, Marianne dragged her bags toward the cabins. Duffy took one and gave an exaggerated shiver.

“What?” Marianne demanded.

“Oh, the cold front comin’ off of you two. It’s enough to give a man frostbite of the undercarriage.”

Marianne grimaced. “Gross. I don’t want to think about your undercarriage. And we’re not cold. We’re just civil, which is pretty good for us, considerin’ we haven’t talked in about four years.”

“I guess,” Duffy muttered. “Just do me a favor, okay? Don’t go messin’ around Carl’s head too much. It took him a while to get over you, and I don’t think I could live through listening to that much tragic country music again.”

“How long did it take?” she asked.

“Manny.” He sighed. “I hate to break it to ya, but you’re not the center of my universe. It ain’t like Carl and I sit around paintin’ each other’s toenails, pinin’ for the day ya come home. And it ain’t a coincidence that I’ve avoided talking to you about this for years. I don’t want to be in the middle. Carl’s like a brother to me. And you’re a pain in the ass Mom insists is my full-blooded sibling and not some orphan we found on the porch—Ow!”

“Oh, what girl wouldn’t be curious about that?” Marianne shook the hand that stung from slapping his arm. “So he never asked about me in all that time?”

“He was pretty pointed about not asking about ya, if ya get my meanin’,” Duffy said before seeing her expression and sighing. “It took a while. But he’s better now. He’s datin’ again. Don’t go messin’ that up to get closure or whatever.”

“Trust me, I’m closed. That won’t be a problem. Besides, I don’t think I should be takin’ romantic advice from somebody whose marriage can be described as ‘off and on.’ ”

Duffy nodded. “Fair enough.”

Marianne snorted as they reached the trestle tables, which were practically groaning under the weight of the food. The centerpiece was the whole roasted pig that her grandpa and Uncle Stan would have spent all day slow-roasting on the brick smoker behind E.J.J.’s house. Mr. Porky was surrounded by thunder-n-lightning—a chilled mix of cucumbers and onions marinated in spiced vinegar—baked beans, biscuits the size of a man’s fist, corn on the cob, and the holy trinity of cold salads: pasta, potato, and pimento cheese. She scanned the table for the—yep, Tootie had made the roast polenta, molded in the shape of a pork chop for her vegetarian father. Uncle Stan tried to razz Junior about it out of Southern duty, but when Junior explained what he’d seen on his autopsy table that led to a low-fat, high-fiber diet, Stan turned green and never mentioned it again.

“Well, I see you made it back.”

Marianne turned to see her mother, Donna, standing on the porch, a glass trifle dish displaying the contents of a seven-layer salad. The seven layers were an unnecessarily complex and nutritionally deviant arrangement of lettuce, peas, bacon, cheese, cucumbers, onions, and then somehow mayonnaise mixed with sugar came into play. Marianne tried not to judge Southern cuisine too harshly, but this one was lost on her.

Donna McCready was a slender woman with bright coppery hair, a color that had leached into Duffy’s own curly locks but left Marianne’s untouched. Her face was angular, and would have been harsh if not for the softening effect of her large whiskey-colored eyes. Her mouth was set in an unhappy line that Marianne was all too familiar with. Her mama was angry with her, but she was too nice to express that. Hell, Mama was too nice to express anger with anybody—to the point that Marianne worried that repressed anger was going to end up permanently twisting Donna’s personality or turn into an aneurysm or something.

Donna had been raised a nice Southern girl, almost to a fault. But she’d never quite fit into the Aigner-and-pearls set at the Lake Sackett First Baptist Church. She’d enjoyed fishing too much and couldn’t bake to save her life. Leslie had made all of Duff and Marianne’s birthday cakes since they were toddlers. But Donna was too nice to say anything rude to the Sunday School ladies who had no problem being downright bitchy to her. Marianne suspected that it was because her mother was so different that she didn’t feel she had a right to retaliate in bitchy kind. Donna felt it was enough that she was tolerated. She didn’t want to rock the boat.

For now, it just came out as passive-aggressive disappointment. Which was fun.

“Hey, Mama.” Marianne wrapped her arm around Donna’s shoulders for a hug that wasn’t returned, what with seven layers of “salad” between them. Duffy took the last of her luggage inside their parents’ cabin while the rest of the family gathered around the trestle tables.

“Have a seat. Everything’s ready,” Donna said briskly, crossing the patch of yard to put the salad on the table.

Donna had never wanted Marianne to leave for college. It wasn’t as if she were the first McCready to move away for school. Her dad had, her uncle Bob had, even her cousin Frankie was going to mortuary school part-time in Decatur. It was just that Marianne was the one McCready who had no plans to come back.

Marianne took a deep breath. Right. Emotional repression with a side of roast pork.

E.J.J. sat at the head of the table in his old cane rocker, with everyone else arranging themselves close to their favorite dishes for discreet seconds and thirds. The table was lit with citronella candles, a bug-blocking necessity at this time of year. Her father and his assistant-in-training, Cousin Frankie, weren’t there, of course. And neither was her uncle Stan, which wasn’t shocking, even with his involvement in the smoking process.

Stan McCready was the saddest of sacks, moving like a ghost in the background of the family. He was a nice enough guy, a bit of a drunk when she was a kid but not an angry one. He’d been sober for about ten years now, but he’d never gotten over his wife, Linda, running off with their daughter, Margot, never to be seen again. He had a cabin in the compound, too, but had abandoned it years before, preferring to live in the apprentice’s apartment at the funeral home. He said his cabin was too quiet without his family. Marianne didn’t see how sleeping one floor above a morgue would be much more lively, but she didn’t argue.

Aunt Leslie was flanked by her husband, Bob, a sweet man who excelled at the organizational side of funeral planning but left the sales to E.J.J. He was comfortable and relaxed now, chatting with her grandparents, but when speaking to someone not directly related to him, he had the unnatural ability to say the worst possible thing at any given time. It was really better for him to stick with paperwork.

It wasn’t unusual for a family celebration to be missing people, because as her daddy said, death didn’t stop because you had a picnic planned. But this was nice, everybody sitting together under the purpling sky, so busy filling their bellies that they didn’t have time to ask her pointed questions.

“So, what will you be doing with yourself for the summer?” Donna asked.

This was what Marianne got for thinking she was in the clear. She stalled for time, reaching down to feed some pork to one of the dogs, who were all hovering under the table in hopes of catching dropped food.

“I’m not sure. You were the one all fired up for me to come home,” Marianne said.

“Well, it’s not like you had plans for yourself.”

“Mama, I had a job at a law firm, which I liked. I have friends in the city. I have a life. But here I am for the next three months because you told me it was more important than anything I had going, without givin’ me any actual details. Which, while we’re talking about it, is passive-aggressive and not real helpful.”

“You need to talk to your daddy,” Donna said.

“I know. I need to call more often. I’ve just been busy.”

“No, you need to talk to him,” her mother insisted, her dark brows creasing.

Marianne tilted her head and stared at her mother, who intervened on her father’s behalf only when she didn’t think Junior would speak for himself. Donna and Junior were partners. Her parents weren’t head over heels in love, like Bob and Leslie. They had a lasting relationship built on friendship. They were steady and calm, suited to each other. Marianne thought maybe it had made her a little more susceptible to Carl’s moonshine-and-moonlight bullshit.

“I will, Mama. I promise.”

Donna nodded jerkily. Tootie handed Marianne a plate loaded with pulled pork, cheese grits, seven-layer salad, plus potato, pasta, and pimento. Marianne’s jeans felt like they were shrinking already.

“You’re gonna come down to work at the office with me, right?” Uncle Bob asked, drawing Marianne’s attention. “You’re the only other person in the family who understands my filing system. Frankie files everything under D for dead.”

“I suppose so,” Marianne said, struggling to lift the corners of her mouth into a smile. Her family knew she wasn’t chomping at the bit to work at the funeral home. They just didn’t need to know that she wanted to throw the bridle, burn the barn, and run like hell.

Marianne was proud of what the family business represented: generations of McCreadys providing the community with what it needed most, sympathy and distraction. But she had no interest in fishing or funeral planning. She admired her family for being able to confront death and comfort people in their time of need, but the very idea gave her the willies. It was an open secret in the family. Everybody knew her brother would take over the marina operation one day, just like everybody knew that Frankie was the undertaker heir apparent. But Marianne’s future at the business was never discussed, as if not mentioning her lack of interest would change it.

She didn’t want to give anybody false hope, even if it was just a mediocre understanding of Uncle Bob’s files.

A rumbling in the distance signaled the arrival of the McCready Family Funeral Home and Bait Shop hearse. The classic old Cadillac rode smoothly and silently over the bumpy gravel. The only thing wrecking the eerily graceful sight was her cousin Frankie waving her arms like a lunatic from the passenger seat. Frankie’s Cheetos-orange hair stood out in violent contrast to the plush dark interior.

Junior McCready’s eye roll could be seen from the table, but he brought the hearse to a stop beside his family’s cabin. Frankie was out of the car like a jackrabbit, her long, thin limbs a-gaggle as she launched herself at her cousin. Stan, who had been riding in the back of the vehicle—Marianne paused to shudder—unfolded his long frame from the car and followed his energetic niece down the driveway.

“YOU’RE HERE!” Frankie shrieked, nearly toppling Marianne.

“We’re going to have so much fun this summer,” Frankie said. “Shenanigans aplenty.”

“Just remember, you’re eighteen now,” Uncle Stan drawled. “You can be charged as an adult.”

“That’s assumin’ that I will be caught,” Frankie sassed him, pushing him along the bench seat and making a space for herself. Leslie had already fixed Frankie a plate containing all her favorites and was pouring a glass of sweet tea to wash it down.

Stan grimaced but accepted the manhandling with grace. He and Frankie shared a bond Marianne did not understand. Donna had always claimed that Frankie had served as a surrogate daughter after Stan’s family disappeared. Marianne suspected it had more to do with the bone marrow Stan had donated to help Frankie recover from leukemia. Frankie had multiple doses of McCready piss-and-vinegar running through her veins, and she just wouldn’t accept Stan strong-arming her away. Still, it was weird to see perky, colorful Frankie chatting it up with the human personification of Eeyore.

Marianne was pulled from these strange considerations as her father’s long arms wrapped around her and pulled her into a hug that smelled of disinfectant and tobacco, a combination that should not have smelled good but somehow did because it was her dad.

“Hey there, butterbean,” Junior rumbled.

“Hey, Daddy.”

And finally, Marianne felt at home.

3

MARIANNE HAD FORGOTTEN how godawful bloated she could feel after a pig smoke.

She leaned her forehead against the dash of Uncle Bob’s immaculately clean pickup, waiting for him to drive her in to work the next morning. Last night’s dinner had been delicious, of course, like everything Tootie and Leslie cooked, but her body was no longer used to absorbing that much pork in a single sitting. She was going to have to pace herself if she was going to keep her relatively fabulous wardrobe of outlet buys intact for fall. Plus, in all the eating and catching up and cleaning up and somehow more eating the night before, she hadn’t found time to talk to her dad. Her mama was not going to be pleased about that.

Marianne cranked the air-conditioning up to the max. She’d started Bob’s truck before he even came out of his house, knowing they would need the AC to fight off summer’s first sticky touches. Vehicles were one of the few things considered communal on the McCready compound. So many of them were used for business purposes, it didn’t make sense for only one person to have the keys, so a ridiculous number of extra sets were floating around. It only became a problem when your purse was too damn small for your keychain.

Marianne was supposed to ride in to work with her dad that morning, giving them an opportunity for bonding time her mama insisted they needed, but he’d been called in to deal with a fatal boat mishap near the Sackett Dam.

In addition to being the lone funeral director in town, her dad also worked as the county coroner. The funeral home served as the county morgue, since the nearest hospital was almost thirty minutes’ drive away. It was a common practice in small towns, but it was pretty funny to see Junior’s name on the ballot every election. As if someone else were qualified to be coroner or even wanted the job.

Marianne had taken some teasing from classmates over her father’s occupation . . . and she’d been sent to the principal’s office on more than one occasion for walloping those kids into the ground. To this day, she resented the implication that her dad was creepy or violent because he happened to make a living preparing bodies for burial. He took what he did very seriously. He gave dignity to the dead. He did a job no one else wanted but everybody needed. He took care of friends, teachers, even occasionally relatives, something no one should be asked to do, because he didn’t trust anyone else to do it respectfully.

So this morning, she was riding with her uncle Bob, which wasn’t a hardship, unless he tried to play Conway Twitty. Nobody should be subjected to Conway Twitty at this unholy hour.

“Mornin’,” Bob called cheerfully, yanking the truck door open.

“You’re lettin’ out the bought air,” Marianne told him as he handed in two huge coffee mugs. He snickered, climbing into the driver’s seat.

“Is this what I think it is?” she asked.

“Leslie’s one hundred percent guaranteed high-octane day-starter,” Bob crowed, revving the truck engine.

Marianne took a deep breath and socked back two big mouthfuls of the stout, almost thick coffee. “Dear sweet baby Jesus in his manger,” she exclaimed, coughing as the brew rolled down her windpipe.

Uncle Bob smiled beatifically at her, as if his wife’s making coffee that could double as jet fuel were the most wonderful thing in creation. “I’m really happy to have you in the office this summer, hon. It’s the beginning of our busy season, you know. And I could use the extra hands.”

Marianne nodded weakly. Sadly, the summer and the holiday seasons were the busiest for funeral homes. Summer, because the warm months tended to bring people out of their homes to try activities that went beyond their athletic ability and common sense; and holidays, because senior citizens seemed to try to hold on for “one more Christmas” before their bodies finally let them know that enough was enough. She took another sip, knowing she’d need to finish at least a fourth of the cup to face her morning. “So, who do we have on the schedule today, Uncle Bob?”

“Let’s see, we got Oscar Gaskill’s visitation,” he said, guiding the truck expertly over the bumps of the driveway and easing them onto the state road. “He was real proud of you, hon, goin’ off to college and doin’ so well for yourself. He asked about you every time he saw us. We thought he was gonna tear up when your daddy told him about your law school application, but Oscar blamed it on ragweed.”

Marianne smiled into her coffee cup. Mr. Gaskill had only been prone to shows of emotion if they were likely to scare his students into enthusiasm for quadratic equations.

Uncle Bob continued, “And Maisie Trinkitt’s doctors say she’s on her last days at the hospice. Poor sweet gal got diagnosed with end-stage cancer a few months back, before she even knew what was happening, and just slipped downhill. She’s been in a coma for about a month.”

Marianne nodded. Though it sounded ghoulish, it wasn’t uncommon for family members to come to McCready’s before a desperately ill person passed, just to get the most tedious details down before they were mired in the mind-numbing fog of grief. It seemed to help them to have something to focus on and accomplish, when they could do so little to improve their loved one’s condition. “That’s a shame, I like Miss Maisie.”

“Well, her funeral’s not gonna be an open-and-shut deal. Maisie’s special gentleman friend is comin’ in to talk about cremation options, right before her children are comin’ in to talk about which casket they want.”

“Mr. Burt’s been livin’ with Miss Maisie for almost twenty years now. Don’t you think we can call him something a little bit more than her ‘gentleman friend’? The only reason they didn’t get married is that Miss Maisie’s children are a pack of racist assholes.”

“Watch it, or Frankie and Tootie will have you dropping change in the swear jar.”

“Fine, they’re a bunch of racist assholes.”

“Charming.”

“I learned it by watching you, Uncle Bob.”

Uncle Bob snorted, probably remembering the time that little Marianne had toddled into the living room during Thanksgiving and repeated the most colorful bits of Bob’s advice to the UGA football team. Donna had never quite forgiven him.

“I know it’s not right. Burt Beacham did more for Miss Maisie than any one of her kids ever did in her last years. Hell, he did more for her than her husband did in her whole life. He loves that woman somethin’ fierce. But they didn’t get married and he’s not her official next of kin. And I can only go by the paperwork, hon. You know how these things work.”

Uncle Bob wasn’t just referring to the legalities of funereal custom. This was how small towns that hadn’t quite caught up to the more progressive Southern cities worked. Burt Beacham was a black man who happened to fall in love with a white widow while they were in their fifties. But because her grown children worshipped the memory of their jackass of a father, Miss Maisie refused to marry Mr. Burt. She claimed it was too soon for “the children,” even two decades later, but it was more likely that she knew they’d never speak to her again. So Mr. Burt had pretended to go home to his own house down the street every night, only to sneak back to Miss Maisie’s to sleep in their bed.

“I know.” Marianne nodded. “It’s just sad.”

“It is. Some people still aren’t comfortable with that sort of thing around here,” he said. “Telling them to hurry the hell up and get used to it won’t get them there any faster.”

Marianne made a noise between a snort and a harrumph as they pulled into the McCready Family Funeral Home and Bait Shop parking lot. The expansive gravel lot opened up right onto the water, giving a pretty spectacular view of the widest section of Lake Sackett.

The funeral home was freshly painted in an understated cream with brass accents—incredibly elegant for a building with the words bait shop attached to it. While half of the visitors might be there for water sports and fishing, E.J.J. wanted the mourners to feel that their grief was respected, too.

E.J.J. also insisted that the landscaping be kept neat and the gravel free of trash. When Duffy and Marianne were kids, it had been their job to pick the litter out of the parking lot with sharpened broomsticks. Frankie was generally excused because she was just getting out of the hospital or getting ready to go into one.

The main McCready’s building was open in the middle, in a dog run configuration, to allow visitors to see through to the water and a three-pronged dock. The neatly painted red shop, Jack’s Tackle and Stuff, stood at the end of the far left prong. Sarah’s Snack Shack, also red and decorated with Leslie’s collection of vintage Coke memorabilia, was situated on the dock on the right. The docks were busy, with dozens of boaters lining up for gas, snacks, bait, and gear, already hours later than the more dedicated fishermen, who knew the prime hours started right before sunrise.

In years past, on the rare days when Donna didn’t have clients lined up for fishing excursions, she’d drag Duffy and Marianne out of bed, slap a couple of Leslie’s Breakfast Sticks into their hands, and put them on the family skip. Duffy always fell right into step beside their mother, pulling crappie into the boat so fast, they barely had time to bait the hooks before catching another. Marianne preferred reading from under a big sun hat, something Donna had never cared for, but likewise never criticized. Those quiet mornings of feeling peaceful but not alone were some of her favorite memories, before her need to separate from her family had become unmanageable.

Marianne climbed out of the truck and was immediately struck by the smell of exhaust and hot frying oil. That meant Leslie was hard at work at Sarah’s Snack Shack, slinging boxed lunches and corn dogs as fast as she could finish them. Maybe Marianne could grab a Breakfast Stick, Leslie’s original portable breakfast creation involving bacon wrapped around a sausage, stuffed with cheese, dipped in egg batter, and deep-fried. For a tiny woman, she was a bit obsessive about bubbling canola oil.

Marianne and Bob rushed through the office door to the blessed cool of an industrial air conditioner. The office hallway was lined with paint-by-number Jesuses, the work of her late great-aunt Sarah, who’d had no artistic talent but a lot of enthusiasm. The things had given Marianne and Duffy nightmares when they were little, but no one had the heart to take them down. So the much beloved ancestor was memorialized here in the rear of the building . . . where customers never ever ventured.

E.J.J. was waiting in Bob’s office, searching through the filing cabinet like a man on a mission. He had his blue-striped tie slung over the shoulder of his suit jacket to keep it from getting caught on the folders.

“Grandpa? You’re up and at it early,” Marianne said, dropping her purse on the desk.

“I’m lookin’ to see if Maisie Trinkitt left any sort of preplanned service contract, a payment, anything.”

Bob shook his head. “No, Burt said that while she was still lucid, she left her written funeral instructions in an envelope in her bill drawer with a blank check made out to McCready’s.”

“Well, the Trinkitt kids are already here and raisin’ ten kinds of hell because they don’t like what Maisie’s got planned. They’re sayin’ it’s disrespectful and they won’t have it.”

Marianne snickered into her coffee. The Trinkitt “kids” were all in their midthirties to forties, but they were awfully muleheaded, thanks to their daddy’s influence. E.J.J. didn’t cotton to that sort of thing. He also didn’t cotton to snickers when he was frustrated.

“Sorry,” she said, clearing her throat.

“The Trinkitt kids are here already?” Bob exclaimed. “But they’re not scheduled to come in until ten! Burt Beacham is supposed to be here in twenty—”

Uncle Bob’s voice drifted off as the thud of scuffling and ceramic breaking sounded out from the front of the building. “Uh-oh.”

Bob took off with surprising speed for someone his age. Grandpa E.J.J., with his bad knee, and Marianne, with her office-wear heels, followed at an equally frantic but slower pace. They ran into the plush sales office/showroom to find the display caskets knocked to the floor. Several urns lay shattered on the plush carpet. Burt Beacham was pulling at the collar of his shirt, which seemed to have been twisted around his neck. And Uncle Bob was struggling to keep Lemm Trinkitt in a hammerlock. It should have seemed out of place, her genial uncle throwing himself into a fight like he’d just been tagged in, but this was not the first hissy fit thrown in the venerable halls of McCready’s. Uncle Bob knew how to hold his own.

Laurie Trinkitt, who was a good fifteen years older than Marianne but lingered around the Sackett County High School party scene to the point where it got sort of sad, was holding a heavy metal memorial urn over her head as if she was going to bring it crashing down on Uncle Bob as soon as his back was turned. The ruins of several of the more fragile models lay broken around her feet. Roy Trinkitt, the baby of the family, was glancing between his siblings and the door, as if he couldn’t figure out whether to help them or flee before charges were pressed.

“What in the Sam Hill do y’all think you’re doin’!” E.J.J. thundered in the voice that would have served him well as a fire-and-brimstone preacher . . . or maybe an elementary school principal. “This is not some honky-tonk where you brawl out your problems. Sit down and shut up so we can figure out what’s what.”

Lemm stopped struggling, but was none too gentle in the way he shoved away from Uncle Bob. Jowly and thick of neck, Lemm rose to his considerable full height, shot his cuffs, and straightened his tie over his ballooning belly. He had followed Bill Trinkitt into the family’s bass boat dealership and, just like his daddy, somehow thought that made him a pillar of the community. He did not appreciate being told no or any of its variations, and was prone to citing his many civic contributions and sports team sponsorships when he heard it. “I don’t appreciate bein’ spoken to that way, E.J.J. That’s not how I treat payin’ customers.”

“Well, you’re not a payin’ customer, Lemm, your mama is. But you’re welcome to take your business to some other funeral home in town if you don’t like it.”

Lemm harrumphed and flopped down into the comfortable chair that flanked the sales desk, which by all rights should have gone to Burt, as the most senior man in the room who had recently been assaulted.

“Mr. Burt, are you all right?” Marianne asked quietly. “Can I get you some water or an ambulance or anything?”

Burt Beacham nodded his thick head of salt-and-pepper hair. His skin, dark and weathered by time, was set with disappointment, but his eyes were just as kind as ever. “I’m fine, Marianne. Thank you. It’s good to see you.”

“You too. I wish it was under better circumstances. And that you weren’t surrounded by . . .” Marianne looked to Laurie and saw that she still had the urn held over her head. She huffed under her breath, “Trinkitts.”

She crossed the soft beige carpet and took the urn out of Laurie’s hands. “Give me that.”

Laurie, who was dressed in red cowboy boots, too much gold-plate jewelry, black jeans, and a zebra-print blouse as sheer as it was low-cut, gave Marianne a sulky look. “I’m goin’ outside for a smoke.”

“Classy,” Marianne grumbled, putting the urn back on its little display shelf on the far wall. She began matching the unbroken urns to their lids and returning them to their displays. She’d always found the various shapes and materials of the urns to be fascinating. Some people chose to display the cremains of their loved ones in very dignified polished metal containers. Others chose little boxes in the shape of a football, a star, or their favorite motorcycle.

“Roy, pick up that chair y’all knocked over and sit down,” E.J.J. barked. He got up from his desk and righted a chair for Burt, glaring pointedly at both Trinkitt men. “Now, I don’t know what y’all were tusslin’ over, but I don’t tolerate that sort of behavior in my place of business. So y’all can either decide to behave like decent, God-fearin’ men, or you can walk out and stay out. I’ll be billin’ you for the urns you broke and any other damage you did.”

Lemm opened his mouth to protest but E.J.J. raised his hand. “You should count yourself as lucky I don’t call the sheriff in here to settle it out. As I see it, Burt still has a right to do that. What in the blue hell were you thinkin’ tryin’ to choke a man twice your age? Your mama raised you better than that.”

“Don’t bring my mama into this.”

Burt’s brow crinkled. “We’re here to plan her funeral services, Lemm.”

“You were nothin’ to her! I’m her son! You shouldn’t even be here!”

“I think we all know that’s not true,” E.J.J. said placidly. “Bob, we’re all good here, if you want to go help Stan and Frankie with Mr. Gaskill’s setup.”

Uncle Bob gave Lemm one last look, as if to say, I don’t know how many kicks it would take to whoop your ass, but I’m willing to figure it out. And then exited the room, leaving Marianne to continue to clean up the damaged displays on her own.

“Now, Burt, I understand Miss Maisie left you instructions for how she’d like her funeral services planned.”

Burt nodded and took a pretty pink envelope out of his shirt pocket. “Maisie wanted to be cremated. She wanted her remains to be sprinkled off the top of the Sackett Dam. She says here, ‘I always wanted to know what it would feel like to jump off of that thing, but I was never crazy enough to want to try it.’ ” Burt smiled fondly and slid the paper across E.J.J.’s desk.

“That’s horse shit and you know it!” Lemm yelled. “You need to get out of here before I—”

“Son, don’t go lettin’ your alligator mouth write a check that your hummin’bird ass can’t cash,” Burt said, pointing his finger in Lemm’s face. Lemm snarled. Burt blanched when he realized Marianne was still in the room. “Beg pardon for the language.”

Marianne shrugged.

“Don’t call me son! I’m not your son. And my mama wanted to be buried next to my daddy in the church cemetery. She wouldn’t want no hippie funeral.”

“You’ve got proof right here in her own hand that’s what she wants,” Burt said.

“I don’t know that’s my mama’s handwriting,” Lemm said with a sniff.

“You know good and well it is,” Burt retorted. “Didn’t your mama ever talk to you about this? Roy?”

Roy, a lanky man with thinning blond hair, swallowed thickly and opened his mouth. His small brown eyes glanced furtively at Lemm and he shook his head. “No. Not that I can recall.”

Burt rolled his eyes. “So you think I made this up? You think I want to dishonor your mama to get my own way? You think I want to be here? When she’s layin’ in a hospital bed, fadin’ from this world? I’m only here to make sure she doesn’t get railroaded by you one last time.”

“I think you don’t like the idea of her resting in peace next to our daddy, where she belongs,” Lemm spat. “And unless you can prove that’s my mama’s handwriting and those are her real final wishes, what I say goes. I’m the next of kin. I’m the oldest. You don’t even get to come to the funeral if I say I don’t want you there. In fact, stay the hell out of her room at the hospice—”

“Look, it doesn’t have to come to that,” E.J.J. said. “Let’s stay civil here. Boys, I know you want to honor your mother’s wishes. I think we can find a way to take everybody’s feelings into account. Now, Burt, did Miss Maisie leave a will? Maybe something official that designated who her executor was supposed to be?”

“She didn’t see the need in it, no matter how many times I talked to her about it,” Burt said. “The property was pretty much parceled out to the kids in Mr. Trinkitt’s will. I looked around to see if she left any other kind of legal papers at the house, but I couldn’t find anything.”

“Well, that does put the arrangements in Lemm’s favor,” E.J.J. said reluctantly.

“What are you doin’ pokin’ around in my mama’s house, lookin’ for her will?” Lemm demanded.

“Oh, for goodness sake, he lives there,” Marianne exclaimed, making the men turn in their seats. “He’s lived there since I was a little kid! The whole town knows! They only played dumb because you pretended not to know!”

“You keep your mouth shut, missy,” Lemm shot back. Marianne’s eyes narrowed, but she kept her mouth shut. Because she could see her grandfather glowering with a laser-like intensity over Lemm’s shoulder.

“Marianne,” Grandpa E.J.J. said, his voice quiet and steady, “why don’t you go get a broom for those broken urns?”

Marianne bit her lip, knowing that she’d gone a step too far. E.J.J. rarely corrected his children or grandchildren in public. “Yes, sir. Mr. Burt, if you need anything, please let me know.”

She retreated on quiet cat feet to the storage closet, where the family kept the cleaning supplies. She took a moment to breathe and pinch the bridge of her nose. She’d forgotten how easy it was to get drawn into the small-town dramas, the delicate ecosystem of rural politics. As much as she loathed Lemm Trinkitt, she knew alienating him was a bad idea. Favoring Mr. Burt’s side so obviously during the funeral arrangements would cause hurt feelings that could last years. She had to pull her socially appropriate nice-girl facade back together or she wouldn’t survive the summer.

After another steadying breath, Marianne exited the closet, broom in hand. E.J.J. and the Trinkitts had disappeared, most likely because E.J.J. was showing them the various chapels available for the service they wanted for their mother. Mr. Burt’s early-model green pickup was gone from the parking lot. The pink envelope was perfectly squared on E.J.J.’s desk blotter. Bob was right. He and E.J.J. had to respect Lemm’s wishes as the next of kin. And it chapped Marianne’s proverbial butt that Miss Maisie’s wishes might be ignored because she thought well enough of her children to believe that they might actually do what she asked instead of thinking of themselves first. Clearly a lifetime of their general stupidity had taught her nothing.

Marianne took the envelope and, in a moment of impulse, stuck it in her pants pocket. She began sweeping up the broken ceramic. It struck her that, while she wasn’t exactly in her element at the funeral home, she wasn’t at all bothered by the trappings of death. Having grown up in a family where funeral plans and autopsy results were regular dinner conversation, she didn’t get that cold, anxious feeling her friends described when they went to funerals.

She wondered if that made her more emotionally adjusted than the average adult or less.

Marianne picked up a lid made of swirly blue-green glass threaded with brassy gold veins and put it back on top of the matching container designed to look like a rolling ocean wave. Brassy dolphins frolicked in the ocean “foam,” lending the urn a cheerful, if incredibly tacky, air.

“I wonder, if I dropped you, would anyone believe it was an accident?” Marianne muttered.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

Marianne turned to find her cousin Frankie standing in the doorway, arms crossed over a neon yellow Pac-Man T-shirt. She’d paired it with her apprentice’s lab coat, a pair of black pants with white polka dots, and black Converse.

“Frankie, this urn’s been here for years and no one’s bought it. Your daddy only got it to appease you. I would be doing the business a service.”

“I was going through a dolphin phase! I thought it was awesome!” Frankie cried. “And it’s still a conversation piece!”

“A conversation about how damn ugly that thing is, you spoiled brat.”

“I am not spoiled,” Frankie insisted.

“Frankie, when you were eleven, you told your parents you wanted your room to be painted ‘that pale yellow color that happens when you mix mayonnaise and mustard.’ And they spent two days mixing burger toppings until they found the color you meant.”

“Yeah, well, I’d just finished a particularly awful chemo treatment and they were driving me nuts. I was trying to keep them busy.”

“You are diabolical.”

“Daddy said the Trinkitts did some damage in here,” Frankie said, surveying the room. “He wasn’t kidding. You need some help?”

“No, I’m good. It gives me something productive to do.”

“Not exactly thrilled to be working at the family enterprise, huh?”

Marianne jerked her shoulders. “There’s just no place for me here, no niche where I fit in. Duffy’s job shouldn’t even be considered work, since he’d be fishin’ anyway. And you’ve got your work downstairs with my dad. I don’t have that.”

“Look, we get it, Duff and me. This business has never been your thing. No hard feelings. We just don’t want you to make yourself miserable over it.” Frankie smiled brightly. “We could add an estate planning service. If we asked nice, I’m sure Daddy and Uncle Stan would build on a wing.”

“Not exactly how I plan on using my law degree.” Marianne snorted.

“Well, it’s not like you’d have a lot of competition for legal services. George Pritchett is still pretty much the only game in town.”

“Mr. Pritchett is still practicing? Isn’t he like ninety?”

“He’s sixty-seven this year, but no plans to retire.”

Marianne grinned. “Yeah, because then he would have to go home and talk to Mrs. Pritchett.”

Both girls shuddered and got to work clearing out the broken funereal supplies.

The letter in Marianne’s pocket seemed to weigh her down, filling her head with questions and ideas. She’d taken a few property law classes as part of her prelaw major. But she needed someone with an actual law degree to answer those questions before she started making suggestions to her grandfather. Trying to tell Grandpa E.J.J. what he should do without the data to back up your suggestions was the very definition of an alligator mouth to hummingbird ass deficit.

Fortunately, her purse was big enough to hold keys for all the family’s vehicles.

Marianne opened the front door of the funeral home, preparing herself for the humid embrace of the midmorning air. She was not prepared for a thin bottle-blonde with an awful asymmetrical haircut to step into her path, surrounding her with an oversweet aura of Britney Spears perfume.

“Shit-fire!” Marianne exclaimed, wrapping her purse strap around her fingers as if to swing it in self-defense.

“Well, that’s not very professional language, now, is it, Marianne?” Sara Lee Cooper mewed at her through a thick layer of lip gloss too pink for her orange complexion.

Marianne cleared her throat. Sara Lee had been that special combination of gossip and instigator in high school, meaning she was responsible for spreading more manure than any cow in Sackett County. Marianne couldn’t help but recall Sara Lee’s triumphant smirk when she reported that she’d seen Carl looking at engagement rings at a pawnshop, of all places. That quirk in her lip, a silent See, you’re not any better than the rest of us. You’re going to end up stuck here just like all the other girls—engaged, married, and pregnant before you’re old enough to legally drink.

“Sara Lee . . . how are you?”

Sara Lee’s green cat’s eyes were just as sharp as ever, scanning Marianne from head to toe, searching for any sign that Marianne was stepping over that very thin line between “getting uppity” and failing at life. “Oh, just fine. I heard that you were back in town and I just had to stop by and see you for myself. I thought you were off to some fancy law school. Whatsa matter, you couldn’t make it in the big city?”

Marianne smiled as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. “No, I’m just home to visit the folks for the summer. You know, I’m gonna be so busy at school, I probably won’t be back for a few years. So I thought I should make time.”

“Have you seen anybody yet?” Sara Lee asked. “Besides family, that is.”

“No, I just got in last night.”

Excitement flared in those hateful green eyes. “Well, you should know, Carl’s kept busy. He’s dated a bunch of girls. None of them serious, just flittin’ here and there, social butterfly that he is.”

Marianne snorted. Carl had barely spoken to anyone in school until he’d befriended Duffy. And even then, Carl spent most football games and pep rallies standing in the back of the crowd observing, like he was watching for trouble. He was the same way at her family’s gatherings, hovering around the edges, watching, trying not to be obvious about the fact that he was shoveling food in his mouth. It took years before he joined in conversations, understood that the McCreadys’ gentle teasing meant that he’d been accepted into their circle. And given Carl’s family’s tendency to turn any celebration into a drunken brawl, she supposed she didn’t blame him.

Marianne had tried all her usual flirting tactics with him as a worldly fifteen-year-old, complimenting his muscles and asking about his interests—fishing, cars . . . more fishing. But that just made him retreat behind Duffy. So she’d waited until he (finally . . . sweet baby Jesus, finally) approached her and she talked to him like a regular person, instead of someone she liked. Even after she came to understand what a sweet, gentle guy was camouflaged under that rough exterior, it took months to convince him that she really wanted to date him. Months of stupid, random Elvis jokes that made her laugh, and of long talks into the night about books, old cartoons, and whether tales of the local Sasquatch were genuine or inspired by the actions of misguided lovelorn hillbillies. And it was months more before he was willing to anger her daddy and risk his place in her family.

So for months they snuck around meeting out on the lake, under the high school bleachers, on Frenchman’s Ridge on the edge of the county. She’d loved him the way only teenagers fall in love: whole heart, no embarrassment, no thought to consequences or the long term, just dumb-assed optimistic frenzy. And when he finally worked up the nerve to request permission from her parents to date her, she’d given him her virginity on the shore of Deer Tick Bay. Like a lady.

Sara Lee interrupted her musings with her awful nasal twang. “Well, all that was before Jessie Beele, of course. She’s just the sweetest little thing. And Carl’s crazy about her. My mama says that’s why he’s fixing up that big old place on Peachtree. To move her in.”

A large, sour weight gathered in Marianne’s throat, making it hard for her to squeak out, “How nice for them.”

She swallowed thickly. She refused to ask who Jessie was. She knew she wouldn’t have to.

“Jessie is just an angel straight from heaven. She teaches kindergarten at the elementary school, everybody just loves her.”

Marianne kept up her bland expression. “Well, bless her heart.”

“She just loves kids. Can’t wait to have some of her own.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I guess that’s why Carl loves her like crazy. She’s not focused on her career so much that she expects him to wait around forever, sittin’ on his thumbs.”

“I guess so,” Marianne said. “If you’ll excuse me, Sara Lee, I’ve got to run some errands.”

“Oh, I don’t want to keep ya. I’m sure just everybody is gonna want to see you today. But lucky me, I got to ya first.”

Marianne struggled not to roll her eyes as she strode past Sara Lee. She was certain that by the time she left the parking lot, Sara Lee would have activated her evil phone tree and spread the word of how sad and pathetic Marianne had looked at the news that she’d been replaced by a real live angel.

Marianne unlocked Duffy’s truck and climbed into the driver’s seat. That explained why Carl had managed not to invest too much energy in cussing her out when he picked her up, why he was so reserved. Why be mad at her when he’d rebounded with the “sweetest little thing”? She wanted Carl to be happy. She wanted him to have a woman who longed to live in Lake Sackett and give him babies and iron his shirts. She didn’t want to be jealous. She didn’t want to be the petty girl who never wished to see her ex settled with anyone else. But she couldn’t help that cold, acidic feeling gnawing at her chest . . . or the desire to find this angel, Jessie, and run her down like roadkill.

4

MARIANNE WAS DRIVING Duffy’s brand-new pickup into town because she knew it would bug him. But she was being considerate enough to drive it gently down Main Street. Downtown Lake Sackett was just as she remembered, with Main Street slicing decisively between businesses built to resemble rustic cabins. Each boasted a fresh coat of wood stain and brightly painted signs. The tourists would be stampeding through soon and the local merchants wanted to make a good impression.

Driving past the Rise and Shine Diner, Marianne spotted Ike Grandy, the mustachioed purveyor of all things breakfast meat–related. She wanted desperately to pull into the parking lot and throw herself at one of his famous pancake platters. But she had an agenda, and very little wiggle room left in her Spanx after the previous night’s pork-stravaganza.

She parked the truck in front of the offices of George Pritchett, Esq., and fluffed her hair in the rearview. If there was a way to abide by Miss Maisie’s wishes without her family wasting time and effort arranging an unwanted service, she wanted to find it quickly. She was sure Uncle Bob and Grandpa E.J.J. weren’t going to be thrilled that she’d taken off with Miss Maisie’s funeral instructions. It was possible that she was just trying to duck out of McCready’s and the cremation debate had provided her an excuse, but honestly, this was something she could do and do well. She wasn’t great at helping people pick caskets or at customer service in general, really, but she knew how to get legal questions answered. Hell, she might not even have to generate billable hours for Mr. Pritchett if he let her have access to his Westlaw account.

George Pritchett’s law office stood out from its neighbors by rejecting the rustic aesthetic in favor of a silver-gray plaster facade and Doric columns. Mr. Pritchett’s name and title were painstakingly painted on the picture window in bright brassy letters. From the outside, Marianne could see that his reception desk was unmanned. She hoped the office wasn’t closed, because she was barely resisting the siren call of the Rise and Shine as it was.

She pushed the door open, grateful for the cool embrace of the window AC unit. The office was subtly impressive, with walls painted the same light gray as the exterior and dark maple flooring polished by age and pacing. The air smelled of old paper and pipe smoke, and the sound of a ringing phone echoed through the silence. It felt exactly like the law office she worked for in Athens, down to the big rubber plant standing in a beaten copper pot in the corner.

Marianne wanted to wallow in it.

“Who’s there?” a whispery voice called from the back hallway.

“It’s Marianne McCready, Mr. Pritchett!”

“Well, looky here!” Suddenly, light footsteps echoed down the empty hallway.

Mr. Pritchett had always been a stubby man with rounded pink cheeks and twinkly blue eyes. Her brother used to joke that he would be better off baking cookies in a tree than practicing law, which usually got Duffy a whack on the back of the head from Daddy. He strode forward on his little banty rooster legs and shook Marianne’s hand vigorously.

“Hey there, shug!” he cried. “It’s been an age! Good to see you! I heard you were comin’ back, but I didn’t expect you to visit me so soon!”

“Well, we had a question come up at the funeral home and I was hoping I could look up some case law that could help us figure out how to handle it.”

“I might could help you.” Mr. Pritchett practically made (tiny) grabby hands for the pink envelope. “Whatcha got for me?”

“Well, I don’t want you to feel obligated to give us free legal advice,” Marianne said carefully.

“Honey, your grandpa buried my daddy when my mama—bless her soul—didn’t have a pot to throw. He let her pay off her balance in eggs and butter over the next eight years. Your family has done more than enough favors for mine. And I doubt you’re about to hand me a big ol’ class-action lawsuit. Give it over.”

Marianne snickered as she slapped the envelope into his palm.

“Poor Maisie. She’s been on the church prayer list for months now. Brother Marshall said she was real close to her appointment with the Lord.” Mr. Pritchett frowned as he read over Maisie’s funeral instructions. “I told her she needed to make a will with those idjit children of hers. And now it’s too late. Come on back, hon.”

Marianne couldn’t help but notice that the phone continued to ring as they walked back to his book-lined office.

“Does it violate attorney-client privilege if I ask why she didn’t write a will?” Marianne said as he gestured to a plush club chair across from his large walnut desk. The phone was still ringing, but Mr. Pritchett ignored it and poured her a glass of sweet tea from the beaded crystal pitcher he kept on his sideboard.

“Naw, because she was never my client, just a friend of my wife’s. You know Maisie. She never was one for confrontations. And she knew that it would cause trouble if she wrote out a will appointin’ Burt as her executor or leavin’ him any part of her property, especially if her children found it. And you know as sneaky as Laurie is, she would have snooped through the house and found it. Maisie kept puttin’ it off. She just kept tellin’ my Nancy, ‘Give ’em a few more years. They’ll come around.’ She ran out of years, that’s all.”

“So Lemm’s in charge of things?” Marianne asked. “The instructions she left aren’t legally binding at all?”

“They’re not notarized,” Mr. Pritchett said. “Or witnessed in any way. And as knot-headed as the Trinkitt kids are, they’re not gonna just give in out of the goodness of their hearts. I mean, Burt could take them to the civil court and try to push the matter. Get a handwriting expert involved, prove she wrote them. But even then, they could be dismissed. Besides, Burt doesn’t have that kind of money, to put a case through court. And none of this really matters, because you don’t have the luxury of time. Maisie is gonna die, soon from the sound of it, and this needs to be settled quickly.”

Marianne nodded sadly. “I guess my family has no choice but to abide by the Trinkitts’ wishes for a full funeral and burial.”

“Looks like,” he said, sighing when the phone rang again.

“Did you want to get that? Where is Miss Trudie?” she asked of his longtime secretary.

“Retired,” Mr. Pritchett grumbled. “Her husband told her that if she didn’t retire by his sixty-fifth birthday, he was gonna pack up the RV and tour Civil War battle sites without her. So she handed in her notice three months ago. And my office hasn’t run right since. If I pick up the phone, I just get distracted by whatever that person wants, and I get derailed from what I was supposed to be doin’. So I let the machine pick up and just answer everybody’s questions at the end of the day.”

“But what if it’s an emergency? Someone’s been arrested or is being questioned by the police right then and there?”

“I’ve got enough of a caseload that for right now, I’m not lettin’ that bother me.”

“This strikes me as an illogical way to run a business, Mr. George.”

He held up his hands. “I’m interviewin’ replacements, but so far the only gal who got through the interview process kept tryin’ to put ‘LOLs’ in her business correspondence, which I can’t stand.”

“We all have our crosses to bear,” she told him, lips quirked into a smile.

He shook his head and slid the pink stationery across his desk. “How long are ya in town for?”

“Until August, when law school starts up. The family’s got me workin’ at the funeral home to keep my hands from bein’ idle.”

“I don’t suppose you’d want to work for me until then? Keep me from drownin’ in voice mail? It’s just answerin’ phones, filin’, and bein’ discreet. If you can handle the funeral home, you can handle it here.”

She grinned at the prospect of staying in this nice, quiet office where she actually understood most of what was happening. And then realized that would mean telling her family that she wasn’t going to work with them for the summer. Less than twenty-four hours after getting back into town. “I’ll think about it.”

“Let me know,” he said, offering her his hand to help her up from her chair. He ushered her out of his office, to the lobby. “And tell Miss Tootie that my Nancy is bringing a pecan pie to the card game this week.”

Marianne hooted. Tootie had been saving up her weekly card winnings for a while, hoping to take Grandpa E.J.J. on a Caribbean cruise—all expenses paid by her deftness at poker. “Are they still doing that?”

“You bet they are. Nancy’s been losing ten bucks to your grandma every week now for nigh on twenty years.”

“Good thing they keep the pots small.” Just as she opened the door, the phone rang again.

He sighed. “And think about that job offer. Whatever your family pays, I’ll double it.”

“I will, I promise.”

Marianne tried to get to the truck quickly, before the humidity ruined her hair. But just as she was climbing in, she spotted the red-and-white sign for Mason’s Towing, blinking at her from its spot next to the golf cart dealership. The shop was closed, which wasn’t unusual. Wendall Mason had always kept his business closed on Mondays to make up for all the weekend hours he lost to other people’s vehicular emergencies. It was a little irritating, though, knowing that her poor busted baby was locked in Carl’s repair bay, neglected, while she drove Duffy’s truck around.

She turned east, toward Peachtree, where Wendall Mason’s great-grandfather had built a veritable palace by Lake Sackett standards. It stood high on the crest of a hill, overlooking Main Street, so the Masons could get the best view of the lake. It was a couple of blocks away, too far to pick along in her needle-thin heels. She started up the truck and moved it the scant half mile up the hill to the faded manor house.

While it was stately from afar, the house failed to impress up close. The gingerbread trim on the porch was molting old gray paint. The slate roof sagged. The fence looked like Hap Borchard’s smile, gapped and an indeterminate rusty color.

A pit bull mix, mottled in a piebald pattern of reddish-brown and white, lay across the top of the limp porch steps. While he had the stocky build and barrel head of a typical pit, his snout was elongated like a bird dog’s and his ears perked up. Frankly, he reminded Marianne of the goblin puppets from that David Bowie movie. Marianne could hear the strains of “The Meanest Girl in Town” from inside the house, underscored by the whine of power tools.

She was starting to resent Elvis for providing the awkward, emotionally provocative soundtrack to her life.

The dog’s glassy black eyes followed her on her ascent up the front walkway, but his head didn’t move as she got closer.

“If I ask real nicely, can you agree not to bite me?” Marianne asked in a calm voice. “These pants were not cheap and it’d be a shame to ruin them.”

“He doesn’t bite. Unless you’re an Auburn fan,” Carl called as he walked through the frame of the open door. He was wearing ratty jeans, and while he was technically in possession of a shirt, it was hanging loose from the waistband of his jeans to soak up sweat. Sweat that was rolling down his smooth, tanned skin in tempting droplets. On an unrelated note, Carl had been working out since the last time she saw him shirtless.

Her dignity was taking a lot of hits today.

Desperate to look anywhere else but at Carl’s attractive sweaty chest, Marianne spotted the small metal tag hanging from the dog’s red leather collar. It read PIG.

“Your dog’s name is Pig?”

“That’s all he’ll answer to,” Carl swore. “I tried calling him King or Spot. I even called him Tupelo for a while. He just ignored me. But as soon as I offered him a pig’s ear, he perked right up. So ‘Pig’ stuck. He rides with me on jobs sometimes, unless I know the person doesn’t like dogs or is allergic or something.”

“How long have you had him?”

“Couple of months. Tootie found him all twisted in some fishing line on the shore near your place, took him in and nursed him up. He was super skittish and wouldn’t eat for nobody. Tootie was afraid that she’d have to take him to the vet for supplements or a feedin’ tube or something. But I came by for a visit, fed him beef jerky I had in my pocket, and he’s been my buddy ever since.”

“That’s a pretty big deal, my grandma givin’ you one of her dogs. Duffy asked her if he could keep that beagle, Roscoe, when he was eleven? Tootie told him no, that maybe after he kept a goldfish alive for more than a few weeks at a time, she’d think about it.”

“Well, he did go through a lot of goldfish,” Carl said.

“So.” She gestured to the large foyer behind Carl, which was empty save for cut lumber and paint-spattered tarps. “This is . . . spacious.”

“It’s a little close to town for my tastes. And I haven’t got much done,” he said, waving her into the foyer. Though the parlor and dining room still had large holes in the hardwood floors and plastic sheeting over cracked wall plaster, Carl’s efforts showed in the newly replaced windows and refinished stairway. Marianne supposed knowing the stairs weren’t going to collapse from underneath you was a big plus when living in a two-story house. She spotted multiple cans of paint in the corner, with subtle shades of slate blue and sage green dabbed on the lids.

Marianne could imagine those colors on the walls. She could see the floors polished to a high shine, covered in soft area rugs in complementary shades. She could see comfortable, functional furniture arranged around the stone fireplace, meant to encourage people to sit for a while, get comfortable. She could see dinners served on a long maple table in the dining room. She could hear forks scraping against plates and laughter and conversation. This could be a home.

“I don’t have a lot of time to work on it. It’s why I keep the whole ‘Mondays off’ thing goin’, just so I can get some hours in.”

“I guess this is the wrong time to ask about my car, huh?”

“I’ll get started as soon as I get the parts. It won’t take me long,” Carl told her, flicking her with a bandanna from his back pocket. Marianne laughed. “Smartass.”

“I know, you’ve gotta work on my car if you’re gonna pay for the repairs on this place.”

Carl grimaced. “Yeah, but it’s a hell of a lot more comfortable than where I grew up. There’s a roof, with no holes, for one thing. And I can get through the night without worrying that my mama’s gonna set the place on fire trying to make scrambled eggs three sheets to the wind.”

Marianne sighed. “It must be kind of nice, havin’ the whole place to yourself . . . she said after spending one night under her parents’ roof.”

Carl snickered. “Growin’ up the way I did, where my whole life could get turned upside down by someone else’s screwup, yeah, it’s nice. I like knowing that I’m not gonna come home to a huge blowup fight, or the screen door ripped off because it wouldn’t close right. I know my bills are paid, so I’m not gonna wake up one morning without lights or water. It’s safe and it’s mine.”

“I get it,” she said. “It’s going to be beautiful when you’re finished.”

“Thanks,” he said, smiling with genuine pleasure for the first time since she’d come back to town. He’d stopped smiling for her like that on that day on the lakeshore, when she’d stomped his heart into the high grass.

“Carl, about how I left things—” she began.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, the smile sliding off his face like greased lead.

“I shouldn’t have done that. I hurt you and that was wrong. I should have apologized a long time ago, I just didn’t know how.”

“ ‘I’m sorry’ is a good way to start,” Carl grumbled.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I was young and I was scared and I was stupid.”

“Scared?” Carl’s brows drew together. “Why in the hell were you scared?”

“Hey, Carl!” a bell-like voice called from outside. Carl leaned through the door. Marianne saw a train of elementary school children holding hands as they trooped down the sidewalk in front of Carl’s house. They were singing a song about counting by fives and some of them seemed to be skipping. A woman with long black hair and a tiny Scarlett O’Hara waist was leading them, also skipping.

The dark-haired Pied Piper waved. Carl’s face lit up in a bright, happy expression and he waved back. Marianne wasn’t sure, but she thought maybe she hated this woman on sight.

“Hey, Jessie!” he called. “Goin’ to the park?”

“It’s bug project day!” one of the kids yelled. “We’re gonna catch butterflies!”

“I’m gonna get me a frog!” a short ginger-haired boy bellowed, making Marianne wince. “I don’t like butterflies.”

“Come on, kids!” Jessie called, waving to Carl. Marianne couldn’t help but notice that the happy expression was still plastered across Carl’s stupid, beautiful face.

An awkward silence hung between them as the kids trooped away. Marianne shifted, resisting the urge to lift her damp hair off her neck. So that was who Carl was dating now. She was gorgeous. And apparently worshipped as a deity by small children. This was Marianne’s nightmare.

“I’ve gotta go,” she said, hitching her purse over her shoulder.

“Marianne, come on, we need to talk.”

But Marianne was already halfway down the front steps. And she’d learned to make pretty good time in those heels. “I’ve gotta go!”

5

MARIANNE HAD STRIPPED down to her suit pants and camisole, drinking moonshine and sweet tea from a jar from the Snack Shack. She’d stayed late at work, trying to catch Junior so she could have more than a passing “hi” from her father, but he’d been so busy, he’d kept putting her off. And when the last visitation cleared out, just after six, he got called out to an incident involving a “homemade bungee jump rope.”

She stared out over the twilight-colored water, but the quiet, gentle lapping against the dock did nothing to calm her. Carl was dating the modern personification of Snow White.

Marianne wanted to be happy for him. She really did. And maybe it was the moonshine doing her thinking, but maybe she wanted this girl gone. Not dead or kidnapped by an Internet predator or anything, just gone. She’d thought that she wanted Carl to be happy. She’d thought she wanted him to marry someone else and make pretty babies with her. But she didn’t want that at all. She didn’t want him to be miserable or bald or anything. She just wanted him alone. Happy, but alone. Was that so wrong?

Marianne swallowed the sweet moonshine combination and winced. She was not a good person. Nope.

A cold wave of panic washed through her as, for the first time since she’d fled Lake Sackett, she felt a tiny bit of doubt about her seven-year plan. What if she was wrong? What if she was making a mistake, going to law school? What if living some life she’d conjured up in another city wouldn’t make her any happier than living in Lake Sackett? She enjoyed her life in Athens, but what if that was just the side effect of her desperation to be different from her high school classmates? What if the novelty of living apart was all that kept her there? Did she want to be a lawyer? She liked the intricacies of the law, like a puzzle to solve in order to help people. But did she really want to wait another three years before she started her working life? What if she was committing a small fortune to an education she might not want? For no other reason than she didn’t know what else to do with herself?

No.

She shook her head.

No.

She’d had this plan since she was a kid. She’d spent years studying, clerking, earning her spot. Everybody in this town knew that she was planning to be a lawyer. What would people think if she didn’t follow through?

Okay, that was also a pretty stupid reason to commit a small fortune to an education when there was a tiny possibility she didn’t want it.

“That’s McBride white lightnin’. Mama gets it from her cousin, Clayton, and you know she only uses it when she has a migraine.”

Marianne turned to see Frankie standing behind her wearing pink-and-orange camouflage pants with a bright pink T-shirt. “Yeah, I’m no medical professional, but I don’t know how smart it is to knock yourself unconscious to avoid a headache.”

“Couldn’t possibly be as dumb as poutin’ your way through a mason jar full of the stuff,” Frankie noted.

“I’m not poutin’. This is my second jar, so there.”

Frankie shuddered. Marianne’s cousin was an acquired taste, like grapefruit juice mixed with a little bit of crazy. Frankie had been diagnosed with a particularly nasty case of leukemia when they were just in elementary school. Marianne didn’t understand everything at the time, of course, just that her daddy told her, very honestly, that Frankie was sick and her parents were afraid that she would never get better.

It was during that time that Frankie started hanging out with Marianne’s dad. Marianne didn’t realize until later that Junior had been introducing Frankie to the concept of death, trying to make it less scary. If anything, he seemed to make it fascinating for her. Frankie went into the hospital a regular little girl who loved My Little Pony, and left wanting to dye her hair Easter-egg purple as it regrew and asking to join her father as he worked in the mortuary.

Sometimes Marianne envied Frankie’s closeness with Junior. Their work was something Marianne would never be able to share. Marianne had wandered downstairs into her dad’s workspace when she was nine, saw poor Kerwin Helms all laid out on the prep table, then promptly screamed herself hoarse and passed out. She’d had nightmares for months and ended up having to talk to a counselor at her school. That was the end of any possible career at the funeral home.

And when Marianne was younger, she’d been jealous. After all, Frankie’s parents both thought the sun and moon set on everything she did. Hell, Uncle Stan went through surgical procedures to keep her alive. Frankie had enough adults who adored her. Why did she need Marianne’s father, too? But eventually she understood that her dad needed someone to pass his skill on to, and it was obvious she wasn’t going to take on the task. And Duffy spent more time out on the water than he did on land. So she stopped being jealous of Frankie, and was just grateful someone in the family was willing to serve as undertaker for another generation.

Frankie plopped down on the wood next to her. “So what’s the bee up your butt?”

“I don’t have a bee up my butt.”

Frankie pointed to her face. “Skeptical.”

Marianne opened her mouth to say she was fine, but Frankie pointed at her face again. “It’s Carl.”

“Of course it is. Somehow that skinny goof Duffy used to bring around for barbecues grew into a magical unicorn.”

Marianne’s brow furrowed, imagining rough, manly Carl in sparkly rainbow coveralls. “I’m sorry, what?”

“He doesn’t drink too much. He’s employed and works hard. He doesn’t have commitment issues, kids, or crazy ex-girlfriends. He doesn’t attach way too much emotion to the outcome of UGA football. He’s a mythical, perfect man, difficult to find. Impossible to capture. A unicorn.”

“Well, that’s a disturbin’ image. And I’m the crazy ex in this scenario. I think I may hate his girlfriend. I mean, she sounds like a nice person, from all accounts, but I sort of want to shave off her eyebrows when I meet her.”

“So this is about Jessie Beele? I wouldn’t get wound up about it. I mean, everybody says they’re datin’, but I don’t think it’s anything serious.”

Marianne pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes. “Ugh, why do I care? It’s none of my business. He should be happy. I shouldn’t want him to be alone so I can be comfortable. I’m not a complete troll.”

“So, really, in the long run, you’d like to be able to see Carl in a casual social settin’ and have a regular, normal conversation. Smile, tell tall tales, all that, right?”

“Sure.” Marianne lifted an eyebrow. “What are you gettin’ at, Frankie?”

“You can’t be mad, you agreed this would be for the best,” Frankie spat out in a rapid-fire delivery. It was at that moment Marianne realized that her back was turned to the dock, and Frankie had spent the entire conversation facing out toward the water. She hadn’t turned toward Marianne, which would have given her a view of the dock.

Oh, no.

A rough burlap sack dropped over her head, scratching her face as it was yanked down her body. “Yipe!”

Marianne was shoved back on the dock so the feed bag could be pulled all the way down to her knees. And she heard the harsh plastic scrape of—

“Are you duct-taping me into this thing?” she howled as the tape was wound around her knees. “What if I can’t breathe?”

“Come on, Manny.” She heard Duffy’s voice through the burlap. “We’re goin’ out. And just take deep breaths.”

“You too, Duffy?” Marianne shouted as her brother lifted and tossed her over his shoulder like, well, a sack of feed. “Why couldn’t you just ask me to go with you like a normal person?”

“Kidnapping suits my sense of whimsy.” Frankie was apparently following behind them, but was smart enough to stay out of kicking range. “We even picked the sorghum feed so you’d smell good all night.”

“I’ll give you whimsy when I get out of this,” Marianne muttered as Duffy stepped onto an unstable surface that bobbed up and down. “Are you putting me on a boat? What in the hell? What if you drop me? You will literally be drowning your sister in a bag like some monster in one of Tootie’s bedtime stories.”

“You’ll thank me later,” Frankie told her as Duffy dropped her into a swiveling seat. She assumed that meant they were on her brother’s bass boat, with the free-standing captain’s chairs.

Marianne huffed, “You couldn’t at least take the bag off for the ride?!”

Duffy yanked the chain on the outboard motor and yelled, “Sorry! Can’t hear you!”

“I’ve been drinking moonshine, you dipstick! I hope I throw up in your stupid boat!”

MARIANNE SPENT MOST OF HER captivity coming up with increasingly creative and violent insults to her brother and cousin. She called Frankie a sociopathic wackaloon and implied that Duffy’s genitalia were merely decorative. She threatened to find Frankie’s favorite childhood bear, Mr. Wizzer, and leave him out for the coyotes. She threatened to tell their parents what really happened the day Duffy claimed a rogue Asian carp somehow destroyed the outboard motor on Donna’s new boat.

While Duffy was frightened into silence, Frankie cackled. Marianne was going to have to brush up on her threatening skills.

The boat slowed to a stop and while he was opening the door, Duffy said, “Now, Marianne, remember I did this because I love you . . . and Frankie thought you would find this much, much funnier.”

“Cut me loose or I will tell Mama what Lana was doing to distract you when you ran her boat aground,” Marianne growled.

Duffy carefully tugged his pocketknife through the duct tape and then ran into the trees. Frankie pulled the bag over her head, leaving Marianne’s hair a frizzy, molasses-scented mess.

Marianne told her, “Run.”

Frankie blew out an amused raspberry sound. “If we hadn’t kidnapped you, you wouldn’t have come with us.”

“What does that tell you?”

“That you’re about as fun as canned potato salad,” Frankie told her.

Marianne realized that the boat was one of a dozen or so docked on an island about the size of a baseball diamond, sparsely populated by spindly live oak trees. A couple of guys Marianne recognized from high school were stoking a healthy bonfire in the center of the little spit of land. Dozens of people from her class were milling around the island, chatting and drinking beer from classic red Coleman coolers. A few of them waved, and Marianne waggled her fingers in return, very aware that she looked like she’d just been rolled out of a feed sack. Because she had.

“Make-Out Island?” Marianne sighed, running her fingers through her dark hair. “You brought me to Make-Out Island?”

“A couple of people heard you were back in town and wanted to celebrate your return with a bonfire.”

“So you delivered me to the birthplace of VD?” Marianne groaned. Make-Out Island probably had a proper name, assigned when the Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Chattahoochee and created Lake Sackett. It was one of several “large enough to walk on, but too small to inhabit” islands dotting the interior of the lake. And this one just happened to be the premier spot for local high school students to experiment with alcohol and various other activities nice Baptist kids weren’t supposed to enjoy.

Marianne wondered if her bra was still hanging from the tree where she and Carl had carved their initials. High winds and woodland nudity were not a good combination.

“Was this really a welcome home party for me, or were y’all just eager to relive your drunken glory days?” Marianne asked as her cousin dragged her toward the fire pit.

“Six of one, half a dozen of th’other,” Frankie said. “Oh, look, Carl’s here.”

Marianne’s head whipped toward Frankie, who was nodding at the tree line. Carl was slowly approaching the party, carrying a six-pack but keeping his right hand free. It was a habit he’d never quite broken, she supposed, wanting to keep his punching hand at the ready as he walked into the unknown. He’d done the same thing on the rare occasion that they’d visited his family’s trailer.

Carl had dressed up for the evening, she noticed. His hair was still damp and his hands were scrubbed. His face was wary but clean of grease. He was wearing dark-wash jeans and a plaid shirt with—gasp—sleeves. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that development.

“Wha—” But Frankie had already disappeared into the crowd, grabbing a beer and screeching at whoever controlled the Blake Shelton on the boom box to “turn it up!”

That was the moment Carl made eye contact with her, and the moment she remembered she was wearing nothing but a white camisole and suit pants, covered in sorghum dust.

“Georgia is a death penalty state. Georgia is a death penalty state. Georgia is a death penalty state,” she muttered, turning on her heel to seek out any form of available booze.

And she ran smack into a dainty figure in a sunshine-colored dress. Jessie Beele was even prettier close up. She had a smooth cameo of a face, naturally rosy lips, big eyes the color of violets. Hell, Marianne wanted to crawl into her lap and ask for a story, which would probably be weird.

“Um, hi,” Marianne said.

A perfect smile lit up Jessie’s face. “I haven’t said this in years, but I don’t think I know you.”

Marianne snorted. “Not since you moved to Lake Sackett?”

Jessie laughed and it sounded like silver bells. Marianne took a fortifying, though smoky, breath and stretched out her hand. “I’m Marianne—”

“McCready!” Jessie cried, throwing her arms around her. “I’m so glad to meet you! Your family has been so excited you’re coming home.”

“O . . . kay.” Marianne patted Jessie’s back. “Thank you.”

Jessie released her from the hug. “Frankie’s told me so much about you. And Duffy. Everybody’s been so sweet to me, trying to make me feel welcome, even though I’m not local.”

“Of course they did,” Marianne said. “So, where are you from?”

“Oh, a tiny little town, almost to the Florida state line. You probably never heard of it.”

“Smaller than Lake Sackett?”

“Well, yeah, y’all have two stoplights.” Jessie’s eyes widened in mock amazement.

Marianne laughed and Jessie grinned, delighted. And for perverse reasons even Marianne didn’t understand, she said, “I think I saw Carl over there, if you’re looking for him.”

Jessie’s pale, smooth brow furrowed. “I’ll be sure to go say hi.”

Marianne frowned. Was Jessie holding back her enthusiasm because she knew Marianne’s history with Carl? Marianne was still uncertain about the whole “shave Jessie’s eyebrows” plan, but she didn’t want to make her uncomfortable.

“Jessie!” a female voice shrieked from the other side of the flames.

“I better go,” Jessie said, raising her beer toward the source of that shriek.

“See you around,” Marianne called after her. Jessie winked in response, and it was adorable. Dammit.

Marianne snagged a beer from the nearest cooler and sipped it slowly as she greeted several former classmates. She actively avoided Sara Lee, who was studying her from across the clearing like Marianne was a particularly interesting bug specimen. And she rolled her eyes at the sight of her brother talking to his “on again, off again” wife, Lana. Marianne hadn’t trusted her future sister-in-law in high school, when she’d been a catty, shallow bitch who’d based her beau of the week on who’d bought her something shiny recently. Not much had changed.

While Duffy blindly believed the best of the petite blonde with the guileless Kewpie doll eyes, Marianne saw the way Lana looked at the McCready compound when she visited. Like she expected them to be hiding secret hoards of Civil War gold or something. The McCreadys were an old family. They were a comfortable family. They were not necessarily a rich family. And she’d never liked the way Lana looked at Duffy’s best friend, Paul, for that matter.

“I don’t get it, either.” Carl’s voice was a gravelly rumble at her shoulder. She almost bobbled her beer, but he caught the can before she dropped it and handed it back to her. She’d forgotten that part of Carl’s whole “lurker” package was how damn quietly the man could move. “I don’t get why he doesn’t see who she really is, how he misses all the big ol’ red flags. But I guess men in love are blind and stupid.”

There was more than a little bitterness in his voice, and Marianne hated that she’d put it there. She cleared her throat. “I’ve just met Jessie. She’s very sweet.”

Carl nodded, sipping his beer. “Yep. She’s real nice.”

What was it with people in this town and their frustrating understatement? It left Marianne to infer way too much.

“I can see why you’d want to date her,” Marianne added.

Carl spit a little of his beer down his chin, wiping it off with his sleeve. “We’re not datin’. I mean, people keep trying to set us up. Because they’re nosy and can’t mind their own business. But there’s a reason we never bit. She’s a nice girl and all, but she’s not really my type. And I get the feelin’ she might be more into you than she would be into me.”

Marianne pursed her lips and stared across the bonfire at Jessie, who beamed at her and waved.

“It wouldn’t be the unsexiest thing in the world.” Marianne shrugged, drinking the last of her beer. After a few seconds’ consideration, Carl nodded in agreement.

“So, why are you so interested in whether I’m datin’ somebody?” he asked.

She threw up her hands, a sloshing stream of beer barely missing his feet. “I was tryin’ to be nice. And let you know that I’m okay with you datin’ somebody.”

Carl rolled those green eyes. “Well, that’s real nice of ya.”

“Why are you being such a jackass about this?” Marianne demanded, pinching her lips when she realized several people were staring. She sighed and walked away, into the trees, away from the fire . . . and out of earshot. And Carl was following her. Fan-flipping-tastic.

“Carl, let’s not do this. I’m sorry. I started drinkin’ before I got here. This isn’t the right time. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

They were well beyond the tree line now, away from the fire’s glow. She could hear the mosquitoes droning and wondered how eaten up she’d be by the time she got off this godforsaken island. Also, maybe she shouldn’t have downed that beer so quickly, because she was a little wobbly in heels on uneven terrain.

“Marianne.”

“Carl, please—”

He caught her arm and spun her around so quickly, she smashed face-first into his cotton-clad chest.

“Why do you care?” he demanded, holding her arms and steadying her.

Marianne blew a short breath through her nostrils. “I don’t.”

“Why do you care?” he asked again, his voice a low, honeyed rasp. She felt caged in by those arms, by the smell of engine oil and spearmint. She wanted those hands on her. She wanted fingerprints of grime streaked down her skin. She wanted . . . she just wanted. Something in Marianne broke, letting loose a torrent of need. She had to rely on his grip to hold her up just a little more than she wanted to admit, because her knees didn’t quite work anymore.

“I don’t,” she spat through gritted teeth.

“You do.” Carl dipped his head, dragging his nose along her hairline. His lips brushed against the curve of her cheek, hardly enough to feel it. She nuzzled against him, remembering the rasp of his beard scruff with a shiver. His breath mingled with hers as he spoke. “You still want me.”

Marianne froze. Could he smell the way her panties were going moist? Or was it the goose bumps rising under his fingertips? Or was she giving off some secret signal he’d learned when they were younger? Or was she just a sloppy drunk who was hanging all over her ex- boyfriend like her joints didn’t work?

Dammit, moonshine, you have ruined yet another perfectly good evening.

She tried to make her voice as steady as possible as his mouth drifted closer to hers. She licked her suddenly dry lips and felt the barest impression of his top lip against her tongue. They were millimeters away from kissing, and yet, she said, “Sexually, sure, but I don’t want to date you.”

“Well, sex was never our problem.” He said it in a tone that was fond and smug at the same time. And she was petty and drunk enough not to like that.

“I was seventeen and easily impressed,” she said crisply, pulling out of his grasp.

“Well, I couldn’t have made too much of an impression on you,” he muttered.

“Don’t do that,” she spat, poking him in his chest. His very firm, warm chest, which smelled really nice. “Don’t you act like it was easy for me.”

“You couldn’a sped out of town faster if I’d slapped a motor on your ass.”

“It wasn’t easy for me,” she insisted while the party raged on behind him. “Leaving was the hardest thing I’ve ever done!”

“Aw, hell, Marianne, I knew you were gonna leave. Remember? I told you to go. I wanted you to go to school. I wanted you to have that so you wouldn’t feel like you’d missed out. I didn’t want ya to resent me. What I didn’t get was how you left.”

“It’s been years, Carl. We don’t need to talk about this. We don’t need to drag this up right now.”

“No, we’re gonna talk about this now. ’Cause if I wait, you’ll just find another way to wiggle out of it, and another and another, until it’s time for you to leave again. And yeah, it’s been years. Years I spent wondering what the hell happened. Hell, for the first year, I thought any day now you were gonna send me a letter or an e-mail or something explaining why you ran off like a lunatic. But you never—I didn’t ask Duffy. I didn’t talk to Tootie or Frankie. I kept it to myself, because I knew that’s what you wanted. Now, dammit, I think I’m owed some answers.”

“You were gonna propose!” she hissed.

He frowned and threw his arms up. “Yeah, I was gonna propose!” he yelled. “In three or four years, if we were still together. We’d talked about that.”

“No, you were gonna propose before I left for school!”

He shook his head. “Where in the hell did you get that idea? We weren’t ready to get married yet.”

“So why were you even looking at rings in Dahlonega right before I left?”

“Who told you that?” he asked.

“Sara Lee,” she said, jerking her head toward the fire. “And, yeah, I believed her, because, bless her heart, back then, at least, when she stirred shit up, it was genuine. It was one of her few charms. Her implications that you were dating Jessie are making me reconsider that, just so you know.”

Carl grimaced but nodded.

“So why were you looking at rings if you didn’t plan on proposing?”

“I figured it would take me three or four years to save up for the damn ring! I was trying to work out what kinda damage I was lookin’ at,” he said.

“But you never talked about it with me!”

“Well, you didn’t exactly give me a detailed explanation when you skipped town like your hair was on fire. So I guess neither one of us was really good at communicatin’.”

“So you weren’t going to propose that summer?”

“No!” he exclaimed. “I’d already broken family tradition by graduatin’, there was no way I was gettin’ married right out of the gate.”

“Oh, okay then.” Marianne ran her hands through her hair as her stomach began to churn. “Okay.”

He glared at her, and not in his normal, sexy Eastwoodian fashion. “Whaddaya mean, okay? Like I’m not supposed to be pissed off and insulted that the idea of marryin’ me made you run for the hills? I thought that eventually, that was what we both wanted. But the idea of sharin’ a life with me made you run from your home, your family. That’s not supposed to hurt me all over again? Jesus, Marianne! You broke my heart, for no goddamn reason!”

“I panicked,” she admitted. “It wasn’t you. It was this place.”

“What’s so wrong with Lake Sackett?”

“Nothing!” She wobbled on her heels, the beer clawing its way up her esophagus. “It’s beautiful and clean and I can walk to my car without pattin’ my purse for my Mace. I just— I thought I needed something else.”

“Did you get it?” he demanded.

She thought about her nice, tidy life in Athens, and nodded. “Yeah.”

“Well, I hope it makes you happy. Because right now, I don’t want to look at you.”

“Carl, I’m sorry.”

His mouth tensed into a snarl and he pointed one long finger in her face. “Don’t.” And with that, Carl stomped past her, toward the shoreline where the boats were anchored. “Don’t talk to me.”

“Carl!” She watched him untie his boat and jump over the hull without looking back at her. She’d done it again. Somehow, she’d managed to make things even worse with Carl. Oh, and he hadn’t been planning to propose before she left for school, so she’d broken up with him for no reason and could have spent the last four years dating a perfectly nice man instead of wallowing in guilt. She’d thrown away the love of her life because she had all the common sense of a box of hair.

Her stomach seemed to drop through her knees, churning with regret at the sight of Carl’s retreating form. Regret crawled up her throat and burned her mouth.

Nope, that was the moonshine.

She lurched forward, bracing herself against a tree as she threw up the better part of two jars and a can of booze. And everything she’d eaten in the past twenty-four hours. And some things she didn’t remember eating.

“Just like old times,” she wheezed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

6

MARIANNE RESTED HER head on the nice cool laminate counter of the Snack Shack. Even her hair hurt.

“Okay, hon, family hangover cure, comin’ your way,” her aunt Leslie called, far too loudly, from the griddle. Marianne shushed her. “Sorry.”

“How can my head hurt this much?” Marianne whined. “I had three drinks.”

“Yeah, well, I saw how much of my moonshine you used. That’s like twelve frou-frou college girl drinks. Duffy said you spent most of the boat ride home bent over the hull throwin’ up.”

“Not true. I threw up in Duffy’s boat. On purpose.”

“Well, bless your heart.” Leslie slid a breakfast platter and a large ceramic mug next to her head. “All right, dig in. Best cure for a hangover is a big greasy breakfast . . . and Tootie’s Devil’s Due.”

Marianne groaned. Tootie’s homemade hangover concoction, the “Devil’s Due,” was a nasty blend of substances Tootie insisted were vital to helping the body recover from the abuses of the demon alcohol—including garlic, oranges, tuna, and Tabasco sauce. Marianne was pretty sure it was punitive as much as it was curative, but it did work, so . . .

Marianne pinched her nose and tossed most of the contents down her throat.

“Shit-fire,” she gurgled. “I hate everything.”

Leslie cackled. Marianne shuddered and took a huge bite of the buttermilk biscuit layered with fried eggs and bacon and topped with onion jam. She needed the onion jam to chase away the flavor of the smoothie from hell.

“I love you, Aunt Leslie,” she mumbled through the biscuit crumbs.

“Back atcha, shug.” Leslie turned back to the griddle and prepped several more breakfast sandwiches for bagged orders.

Marianne glanced over the counter and saw what looked like a sandwich with a hard, crispy golden shell.

“What is that?”

Leslie shrugged. “I got bored. The grease was already hot. I wanted to see what would happen.”

“Aunt Leslie, did you deep-fry a grilled cheese sandwich?” she asked. “Isn’t that sort of redundant?”

“Not really. It’s formed a nice little crust on the outside, see, but the bread soaked up too much of the oil. Maybe I didn’t have the fryer hot enough.”

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s the problem.”

“I wonder if I can deep-fry chili,” Leslie gasped, grinning widely.

“This cannot lead anywhere good,” Marianne said.

She buried her sorrows and soreness in the breakfast biscuit. She did not remember much beyond throwing up in Duffy’s boat—intentionally. She’d woken up in her bed at home, in a pair of sensible pajamas, feeling like a concrete pylon was resting on her chest. How had she messed things up so badly with Carl? Sure, she’d been a kid when she’d bolted, with all the emotional maturity and decision-making skills of an eighteen-year-old. But shouldn’t she have known Carl better? Shouldn’t she have trusted him more? What kind of person runs away from someone they love because that person has the nerve to want to marry them?

The worst.

“Have you talked to your daddy yet?”

Marianne turned her head—very carefully—toward the dock and saw her mother bearing down on her. Donna was dressed for a day on the lake: jeans, a McCready’s T-shirt, and a green bandanna tied around her thick auburn curls.

Marianne wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “No, Mama, I haven’t had time.”

Donna frowned at her. “You had time to go out drinkin’ with your cousin and your idiot brother, but you haven’t had time to talk to your daddy?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s summer and the baby boomers around here are droppin’ like flies. Daddy’s busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.”

“Watch your language,” Donna told her, glaring at her over her aviator sunglasses.

“I’ll talk to Daddy when he gets a spare minute,” Marianne promised. “What’s so important, anyway? Is there some sort of problem with my college fund or something? I can take on more of the expenses myself. I’ve been saving.”

“No,” Donna bit out. She cleared her throat. “It’s not like Duffy used his. Your daddy wouldn’t want you to spend your savings. But he’s always appreciated that you’ve offered. Daddy knows it’s not easy for you, to work while you’re studying.”

“Careful, Mama, you’re coming dangerously close to sounding like you’re proud of me,” Marianne muttered into her biscuit.

Donna scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Across the parking lot, Marianne could see Lemm Trinkitt pulling in his flashy Cadillac just behind Burt Beacham’s truck. “Gotta go. Thanks, Aunt Leslie!”

Marianne snagged her breakfast biscuit from the counter and ran across the parking lot as quickly as she could in her sensible pumps. She found Mr. Burt and Lemm Trinkitt arguing in the sales office, again, with E.J.J. standing between the two of them. Roy Trinkitt was hiding off to the side, reading pamphlets about environmentally friendly, biodegradable burial pods, acting as if he wasn’t aware of the screaming match two feet away. Marianne couldn’t blame him. She wanted to pretend she wasn’t there, too, but her headache wouldn’t allow the illusion.

Frankie was leaning against the door frame, frowning as the two men yelled incoherently. To Marianne’s irritation, her resilient cousin did not look nearly as battered as she did.

“What now?”

Frankie tried to swipe Marianne’s biscuit, but her cousin held it out of her reach. “More of the same.”

“Oh, for goodness sake,” Marianne grumbled. “I am too hungover for this bullshit.”

“That’s what you get for messin’ with white lightnin’,” Frankie said sagely. “Mama’s cousins are crazy for a reason.”

Just then, Lemm hollered, “I am not going to let my mama be burned in a box!”

“That’s what she wanted!” Burt shouted back. “For once in your life, pull your head out of your own ass—beg pardon, girls—and think about someone besides yourself! Think about your mama!”

“I am thinking about my mama!”

“This is the hamster wheel of arguments.” Marianne sighed. “It’s never gonna be resolved. They just keep sayin’ the same things.”

“Well, they have to come to some decision soon,” Frankie told her. “This is our busy season. We don’t have the storage space.”

Marianne grimaced.

“I went too far, didn’t I?” Frankie asked.

“It was a little dark.”

“Yeah, I’m still working on finding the line. Your dad says humor is one of the biggest challenges in the job.”

“Have you seen my daddy?” Marianne asked. “Mama is all wound up about me talkin’ to him.”

Frankie’s response was cut short by the tinkling of a tiny brass bell Grandpa E.J.J. kept over the front door. They turned to see George Pritchett walk into the reception area.

“Mr. George?” Frankie said, straightening her lab coat over a Jaws T-shirt and leggings printed with tiny sharks. “What are you doing here?”

A quick glance at George’s body language told Marianne that this was not a social call. He was wearing his “professional face.” And professionally speaking, he didn’t look thrilled to be at the funeral home.

“I hired him,” Burt said. “E.J.J., I don’t mean any disrespect, but if you follow through with the burial, I’m gonna have George here file an injunction against you.”

“Aw, hell, Burt, you don’t have to go on and do something like that,” E.J.J. cried.

“What do you expect from the man who led my mama down the path to sin? She didn’t even wait until daddy’s body went cold and she just took up with him.”

“Don’t you talk about your mama that way, boy! She was a good, decent lady!”

E.J.J. pushed Lemm back. “Let’s try to keep this civil!”

“I will if he will,” Burt ground out. And that started up the argument all over again.

“You said the Trinkitt kids would determine the funeral arrangements because the note wasn’t enforceable and they’re next of kin,” Marianne said quietly to George.

He shrugged. “It’s not, but that doesn’t stop Burt from filing an injunction and stalling for time.”

“I don’t like the idea of Mr. Burt spending his money on a pointless legal action,” Marianne said.

“I don’t, either. But I also don’t want him goin’ to some law office outside of town and gettin’ charged three times what I’m billin’ him by someone who won’t do half the work.”

“Are you here to serve anything?” Marianne asked.

“Nothing to serve yet,” he said with a sigh. “Burt just wanted your grandpa to know that he’s prepared to make this official, if he’s pushed.”

“Well, it doesn’t look like Lemm is gonna budge anytime this century,” she muttered.

George raised a sleek gray eyebrow. “Well, maybe he just needs someone to help him see reason?”

“He’s a Trinkitt. He wouldn’t see reason if it fell on his face and whistled Dixie.”

“None of you has any right to be here and you need to get out,” Lemm said.

George responded, “Lemm, do try to be reasonable.”

Lemm scowled. “I don’t have to do shit!”

“Watch your mouth in my place,” E.J.J. told him. “Now, you stay right here and I’m gonna get those contracts for you. But if you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head and behave like an adult, you’re outta here. You can go bury your people at Oakerson’s. I won’t lose any sleep over it.”

“Grandpa,” Frankie whispered mischievously, “Tootie would have your hat if she heard you givin’ business away.”

“Get downstairs, Frances Ann!” E.J.J. barked. “Marianne, watch them and make sure Lemm behaves.”

“That’s not necessary, E.J.J.,” Lemm protested, his cheeks turning red.

“Yes, it is!” E.J.J. yelled, retreating to the relative sanity of Bob’s office.

“Mr. George, could you take Mr. Burt down to the Snack Shack to get some breakfast, on the house?” Marianne asked. “Tell Aunt Leslie to put it on my tab. I’d like to talk to Lemm and Roy.”

“I don’t want them to make any decisions without me around,” Burt said.

“Just give me a minute, Mr. Burt,” Marianne said. “I promise I won’t let anyone sign anything.”

Burt sighed, looking so weary Marianne wanted to hug him. He wrapped his large, paper-skinned hands over hers and squeezed. “Because it’s you, sweetheart.”

Marianne smiled and waited for George to walk Burt out of the room. She turned to the Trinkitt boys, grateful they’d left their foulmouthed sister at home. Laurie just seemed to egg the other two on into bad decisions.

“Could you two sit, please?” She gestured to the chairs near E.J.J.’s desk. The Trinkitts glanced at each other and reluctantly took their seats. Marianne slid into E.J.J.’s luxurious leather club chair, just as comfortable and cushioned as it had been when she’d clambered over it as a child, trying to get butterscotches out of E.J.J.’s desk drawer.

“Lemm, I understand that you’re not comfortable with Mr. Burt—”

“Why do you always call him ‘Mr. Burt,’ but you call me by my first name?” he demanded.

“Tradition. Mr. Burt is older than me, plus—”

“I’m older than you,” Lemm told her.

“Plus, I respect Mr. Burt,” she finished. Lemm’s florid face took on a magenta sheen. “But I also respect your right not to like Mr. Burt. I would like to think it’s because of a loyalty to your father’s memory and not because Mr. Burt’s skin happens to be a few shades darker than yours. Because that would be very disappointing to me, as someone who expects better.”

Marianne pulled Miss Maisie’s letter from her coat pocket. “But all that aside, you know, and I know, that is your mother’s handwriting. These were her final wishes, Lemm. And while you’re not legally required to carry them out, I would hope that out of loyalty to your mama, who raised you and loved you and sacrificed a lot of happiness to make you more comfortable, you would honor her wishes.”

Lemm’s magenta shade advanced to the more puce range. “You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, young lady.”

“Just cut the bullshit, Lemm.” Roy sighed, rolling his beady brown eyes. “This isn’t even about Burt. And you know it!”

Lemm cut his gaze toward his baby brother and glared. Roy, for the first time in his life, glared right back. Lemm actually looked away and cleared his throat. Marianne struggled to keep the dumbstruck wonderment off her face, for fear Lemm would see it and shut down.

“I— It’s not that I don’t like Burt,” Lemm started. Marianne raised an eyebrow. Lemm lifted his hands, defensive. “I did like him when I was a kid. He was good to me. Hell, he coached my Little League team. I thought he was a real nice guy. And me not wanting him to date my mama doesn’t have anything to do with him being a black fella. It just burned me, seein’ my mama so happy with him, knowin’ she never felt that way with my daddy. I know Daddy didn’t exactly go out of his way to make her feel that for him. Growin’ up, I just thought maybe they weren’t the type of people who showed off their affection—it just hurt, you know? Havin’ what you thought you knew as a child ripped up right before your eyes. Knowing she didn’t want to be layin’ next to my daddy until Judgment Day felt like one last kick in the teeth.”

“I get that,” Marianne muttered. “But denying your mama her last wishes because you’re tryin’ to protect your own feelings? That’s not something you can take back, Lemm.”

Lemm took a deep breath, his face returning to a more normal shade. “I know. It’s been botherin’ me since we came here the first time, but I kind of dug myself a trench here with Burt. If I back down now . . .”

“What, he’ll know you loved Mama more than you love yourself?” Roy snorted.

“Shut it, Roy,” Lemm snapped, but there was no real heat in it. “Since I’m bein’ honest, a lot of me not wantin’ to cremate Mama is that I don’t want to lose her.”

Roy frowned. “She’s died this mornin’, Lemm. We already lost her.”

“And if we sprinkle her ashes over the dam, we’re not ever gonna have a place we can visit her,” Lemm said, his voice growing whisper-thin. A film of tears gathered over his dark eyes, and for the first time, the grieving son peeked through the salesman bravado. “There won’t be any place where we can feel her there with us. When I go to the cemetery, I can sit there with Daddy’s stone and talk to him, tell him my problems, and I feel like he’s there listenin’. How in the hell am I gonna do that with Mama, knowing that she’s circulatin’ all the way down to the Gulf?”

“I’d never thought about it like that,” Roy admitted. “But Mama didn’t like the idea of bein’ in a box. We talked about it, before she got so bad off she couldn’t make sense. It didn’t have anything to do with Daddy. She just said, ‘I spent enough of my time in boxes when I was alive.’ She wanted to travel the world, Lemm, even if it was just what was left of her.”

Lemm’s head dropped and there was a tremor in his shoulders. Marianne knew enough to give him a few seconds before politeness demanded he raise his eyes to hers.

She pursed her lips, stalling. “If I came up with a solution that would satisfy your mama’s wishes, but still give you a sense of peace, do you think you could see your way to a compromise?”

Lemm looked to Roy, who nodded sharply. Carefully, Lemm nodded. “I would have to see what it was before you did anything permanent, but yes.”

MARIANNE HOPPED OUT OF DUFFY’S truck and clutched the catalogues for Creative Cremation Solutions to her chest. Frankie had been full of helpful suggestions to present to the Trinkitts, and she’d been nice enough not to make Marianne go into the morgue to talk to her. And for the first time since finding Miss Maisie’s loved ones dusting it up in the salesroom, she had some hope that she could make everybody in this situation content, if not happy.

She practically skipped up the steps to her parents’ house. She hadn’t felt this good in . . . years. Knowing that she might have found a solution, negotiated a peace between people who hadn’t been able to be in the same room without punches being thrown—it was a sort of high. She felt like she could do anything, fix anything. Maybe even talk to Carl without one of them stomping away mad.

This was what purpose was supposed to feel like, knowing at the end of the day that she’d done her best and made someone else’s life a little easier. This was what she was supposed to be able to do when she graduated law school. So why did that suddenly feel so far away and so improbable? Why couldn’t she see herself feeling like this after a long day in court?

Why was she always alone when she started asking herself these questions?

Marianne reached for the doorknob but caught the scent of cigar smoke on the breeze. Eyebrows raised, she put the catalogues on the porch swing and rounded the house, walking toward the lake. On the end of the dock, centered under a perfect pearly full moon, was her daddy. A plume of blue cigar smoke hovered over his head like a thought bubble. And that thought was probably something like I’m the world’s smartest man. I will never be caught.

“You know Mama’s gonna skin you if she finds you out here smokin’ that,” Marianne told him, plopping down next to him.

Junior startled a little but then grinned and nudged his daughter’s side. “She won’t do that. She kills me, there’s nobody to embalm me.”

“Frankie could do it, for practice.”

Junior choked a little on his cigar. “She probably would, which is why I haven’t shown her what the buttons on the furnace do.”

Marianne nodded. “That’s a solid plan.”

“So what’s been buggin’ you, butterbean?”

“I’m fine,” she protested. “I’m just tired, you know, from school and movin’ and . . . I’m fine.”

“That’s not your tired voice. That’s your worried voice. Don’t try to tell me any different. Now, what’s goin’ on? Is it school? Are you in some sort of trouble?”

“I’m not in trouble,” she said, immediately steering him away from any insinuation of her being pregnant. “Of any kind. With anyone. Not even dating, at all. And school is fine. I’m registered. I have money set aside for my books. I have new note-taking software ready to be installed on my laptop.”

“Well, that’s good to hear,” he said, lips twitching. “Though it makes me wonder how smart those college boys could be if they don’t want to date my butterbean. So if it’s not that, and it’s not school, what is it?”

Marianne stared at her daddy. She’d never been able to lie to the man. Even when she was a kid, she’d instantly fessed up to whatever she’d done because she knew he’d be more disappointed if he found out on his own. “The things I’m supposed to want, the things I wanted more than anything just a few days ago, I’m not a hundred percent sure I want anymore.”

Junior shrugged. “Okay.”

“What do you mean ‘okay’?” Marianne demanded. “Daddy, I’ve had these plans for so long. There’s not one person in Lake Sackett who doesn’t know I’m supposed to be starting law school this fall. It’s the course I’ve set for myself, but the idea of giving them up? It kind of fills me with this sense of relief. Like a stay of execution. You shouldn’t feel that way about your plans for your life, right? That’s not normal.”

Junior puffed on his cigar. “Well, it doesn’t sound like it would make for a very happy life, no.”

“But then, when I think about not following through, I wonder if that means I’m giving up on myself. Or I’m too scared to try. I think about telling people I’m not gonna go off and be a big-city lawyer, and I’m disappointed in me for them. I’m not anythin’ special, not different than anyone else who had big plans for herself and then didn’t follow through. What if I stayed in Lake Sackett, and I felt like I was walkin’ around with a big L sewn on my clothes?”

“For Lutheran?”

“For ‘loser,’ ” she said, smacking him. He chortled, dragging on his cigar.

“Sweetie, would you like me to give you some folksy wisdom?”

“Eh.” Marianne shrugged her shoulders, earning her a light elbow in the ribs.

“You want to know what I’ve learned about small towns? Nobody really cares about what’s goin’ on in your life as much as you think they do. I mean, there are special cases, like that Sara Lee gal, who keeps the gossip flowin’, but at the end of the day, the only one layin’ awake in their bed worryin’ about how you’re running your life is you.”

“All of my experiences these last couple of days say that theory is garbage,” Marianne told him.

“Yeah, there might be some talk if you don’t follow through with your plans. Look at your uncle Stan. Most people around here haven’t forgotten that he used to be a drunk or that his wife ran off with Margot, but it’s not like they think of it every time they see him. He’s just the same old Stan. Sure, if Linda came back or Margot showed up to see her daddy, the gossip bugs might get all stirred up, but even that would die down after a while and people would adjust. Someone else would do something more interestin’ and they’d forget all about them.”

“You can always count on the people in Lake Sackett doin’ something interesting,” Marianne agreed, chewing her lip.

“If you didn’t wonder if doing somethin’ different was the right thing, I would worry about you,” her dad said. “But plannin’ your whole life around somethin’ someone might say about you? That’s pure stupid. And I didn’t raise you to be stupid.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Just think on it,” he told her. “Try to imagine your life if you follow through and your life if you don’t. Try to figure out which option you can’t live with.”

“That makes sense,” she conceded as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

“Now, do you wanna talk about that boy?” he asked, using the same exasperated tone he always used when referring to Carl.

“No, I definitely do not.”

Junior grinned. “I will admit to feelin’ relieved when you broke it off with him before goin’ to school. But that wasn’t about Carl. That was about wantin’ you to achieve what you wanted in life instead of worryin’ with some boy.”

“I thought I just said I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“It’s my God-given fatherly duty to ignore that and talk about it anyway,” he told her. “Just like it’s my fatherly duty to despise all boys who come within ten feet of my daughter. Now, Carl’s a good man. I’ve gotten to know him over the years and I see some of the merits I was blinded to when y’all were kids.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Well, if some of this doubt you’re feelin’ about law school has anything to do with Carl, that doesn’t make your doubts less important.”

“You’re encouraging me to consider giving up law school because of a guy?” she asked.

“No, because I know that’s not what you’d be doin’. You said you were havin’ doubts about the life you wanted. That’s more than ‘some guy,’ even if he does factor into it. Besides, we only get so many great loves in our lives. Not includin’ something like that into your decision? That’s also pure stupid.”

“I don’t think it even matters,” she said. “I hurt him. Again. And just when he was starting to talk to me. Last night I told him the reason that I broke it off with him was because I thought he was gonna propose.”

“That’s why?” Junior cried.

“Well, Carl’s hurt all over again, because now he knows the thought of him askin’ me to marry him sent me runnin’. Nothin’ says ‘I don’t think you’re good enough for me’ like dartin’ off like a scalded cat at the first sign of commitment.”

“Was it because you didn’t think he was good enough for you?”

“No!” she cried. “You know I’d never think that. I dated Carl for two years and his family never bothered me. It just felt like what I needed to do at the time . . . and now it’s biting me in the butt. It is kind of unsettlin’ to hear you call him a great ‘love of my life,’ just so ya know.”

“Not half as disturbin’ as it is for me,” he told her. “As far as I’m concerned, you and your future husband, whoever he is, will sleep in bunk beds and find your babies under cabbage leaves. And if Carl is the kind of man I think he is, and the kind of man who deserves you, he’ll come around. You’ll talk it out.”

“Thanks, Daddy.” She slipped her arms around him and squeezed.

“That’s why I’m here,” he said, hugging her tight.

“Mama said I needed to talk to you? She said it was really important. Multiple times.”

Junior’s grip on her went slack. He patted her back. “Oh, your mama just gets wound up over nothin’.” He smiled at her, but it was a brittle, shallow expression that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Mama gets wound up about a lot of things, but most of them are important. What’s going on?”

“It’s nothing that bad, butterbean, really. I just got some tests back after my last physical and had to have some fancy scans. The doctor says there are some abnormalities around my spine, at my tailbone. Something to keep an eye on.”

“Like bone spurs?” she guessed. “Cancer? What?”

Marianne watched her dad flinch at the word cancer.

“It’s cancer?”

Junior opened his mouth and she could see the lie forming on his lips. When he met her gaze, he hesitated and said, “Prostate cancer.”

“Oh, Daddy.” His arms were around her again, and warm tears she hadn’t even felt forming were soaking into his shirt. Her daddy couldn’t be sick. She wasn’t ready for a world without him. She wasn’t ready to be an adult without the safety net of a parent. Most people didn’t lose parents until well into their forties. It wasn’t fair that she could lose him now. He was supposed to walk her down the aisle, to bug her to hold his first grandchild before the cord was even cut. He was supposed to help her navigate having a civil relationship with her mama. How was he going to do that if he was gone?

“Everything’s okay. It’s gonna be all right,” he crooned, patting her hair. She sat up suddenly and yanked the cigar out of his mouth, tossing it into the lake.

“Well, that was unreasonable.” He frowned.

“You are not gonna smoke those anymore. And you’re gonna stop eating Leslie’s deep-fried concoctions. It’s smoothies and kale from here out. And fiber and . . . and . . .” She pulled away, wrapping her arms around herself. “How bad is it? Did you catch it early?”

“No,” he said, taking her hand. “The doctor said it spread fast. And there’s no taking it out because the cancer’s metastasized to the bone. I should have gone to get checked out earlier, but I thought I was just getting old, feelin’ tired.”

“But there are treatments, right? Chemo and drugs and research hospitals?”

“Yeah, I’m already on some pretty good stuff. And I start chemo soon. I could have years yet, butterbean. But there is no gettin’ clear of this. I won’t get better. It will always be with me. It’s just an issue of not getting worse.”

“Why wouldn’t you tell me about this?”

“It wasn’t exactly the kind of news you want to give someone over the phone, hon. Plus I didn’t want to worry you until we knew how I’d react to treatment. I think your mama panicked a little bit at the idea of you startin’ law school. She knows how busy you’ve been and that you probably weren’t gonna ease up, and she wanted to make sure that we spent some time together before classes started. I didn’t want to worry ya, but I’m selfish enough to admit I wanted you home for a little while, too.”

“Is that why you’re training Frankie so hard?”

He nodded. “I’m still gonna be supervisin’ her until she’s got all of her certifications. But the treatments are gonna run me down somethin’ awful and I won’t have the strength to be on my feet so much. It’s a godsend that Frankie’s there to pick up the slack. And I’d like to retire soon, spend the time I’ve got relaxin’ a little bit, try to figure out why your mama’s so crazy about this fishin’ thing.”

Marianne buried her face in his soggy shirt.

“Plus, you want to make sure the person who’s probably gonna handle your shuffling off this mortal coil knows their way around an autopsy table.”

“Oh, Daddy, no. Don’t make her prep you for the funeral,” she cried. “That’s just unfair to Frankie.”

“I won’t,” he promised. “I want to be cremated. And I want my ashes spread over the lake, so I’m always with you, hangin’ around, silently judgin’ you.”

Marianne snickered. Humor at a time such as this was inappropriate, but that was how the McCreadys coped. Death was a part of life, even when it came too soon. And her father was none too subtly trying to get her adjusted to the concept. It didn’t mean he wasn’t scared or that he didn’t take her feelings seriously. Just that he was trying to break the tension on their shoulders the only way he knew how. And he needed her to return the favor.

She leaned back so he could see the earnest expression on her sticky, tear-streaked face. She sniffed. “Can you do me a favor and put that in writing somewhere and sign it? And get it notarized?”

7

EARLY THE NEXT morning, Marianne took Duffy’s boat across the lake to a remote inlet shaped like a deer leg—Deer Tick Bay. She and Carl preferred swimming there because the water was deep and the bottom more rocky than muddy, so the water stayed clearer. Marianne had never been afraid of swimming in the lake. Despite Frankie’s fascination with “bull sharks find their way into inland lake” stories, she never feared what was lurking in the waters of Lake Sackett. She wasn’t keen on getting her feet all mucky, though.

As the early light of dawn skated over the surface, Marianne slipped over the side of the anchored skip. She swam in shorts and a tank top, because if she was going to get into trouble, she wasn’t going to be found by emergency services in a bikini, thank you very much.

The water was chilly, even this close to summer, but the cold kiss of the lake against her skin chased away the blues she’d been feeling since talking to her father. She turned on her back, floating, letting her toes flutter. Her dark hair fanned around her like a cloud, rippling with the tiniest currents.

She’d missed this, being able to walk out her front door and right into the lake. No choking traffic, no frustrations before the relaxation. The absence of honking horns and barking dogs and sirens. Being able to see fireflies at night, the stars. She just rolled out of bed and into a quiet space. She felt safe there, the same way she’d felt safe her entire childhood. She loved the light and color in the city, but this was nice, too. She’d missed her family. They were loud and got in each other’s business and had too many opinions, but she’d missed seeing them every day. She’d always felt like the odd McCready out. It was never that they rejected her. Far from it. But she was interested in things that interested none of them. She wanted things none of them wanted. Their bewilderment put distance between them and her.

She valued being able to think, being able to focus on one thought at a time, even when they were all crowding for attention in her head.

Her daddy. How could her mother not just tell her what was going on instead of cryptically guilt-baiting her back home? She understood wanting Junior to be able to convey the news in his own way, but it seemed almost cruel not to give her a full picture of what was happening, to let her make the decision to come home on her terms. She felt like her mama was testing her character or something. And frankly, she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to forgive Donna for a while.

What was she going to do? She’d spent some time consulting with Dr. Google the night before, and the information she’d found on late-stage prostate cancer had kept her from sleeping at all. Junior had tried to paint a happy face on it, but the prognosis was grim. And the next few months were going to be critical for him, as doctors determined how he responded to chemo and how aggressively they could treat him. How was she supposed to leave him, knowing what he would be going through? How was she supposed to sit in a classroom and concentrate on a lecture when she knew her father’s time was ticking away? She was sure the rest of her family would help. Duffy and Mama wouldn’t be taking care of Junior alone, but knowing that wasn’t the same as being there and being able to see him with her own eyes.

And all those doubts that had been plaguing her before Junior’s confession seemed to double. Did she really want to move her life so far away from her family, or was that a childish goal rooted in fear? Was everything really so much better in the city? Sure, easily accessible Starbucks and cell signals that didn’t depend on the weather were nice, but that seemed paltry compared to staring up at the clear morning sky like this. The friends she had in Athens were funny and always up for a night out, but they knew a carefully cultivated, surface version of Marianne. The career she had planned . . .

That was the sticking point.

“What in the hell are you doin’?”

Marianne jerked up, the shift of her weight at her hips sending her plummeting under the surface. Her head bobbed up and she sputtered water out of her mouth.

Carl was sitting in a canoe just a few feet away, his fishing gear already mounted on the bow. She’d forgotten how silent he was in that thing from years of practice sneaking up on fish. Carl’s hair was stuffed under the Braves cap. He was wearing his usual, jeans and a red Mason’s Towing shirt with the sleeves ripped off. He also wore a pretty unhappy expression—which was not shocking, really, considering the last time she saw him, she’d told him she’d skipped town at the very idea of being tied to him for life. Oh, and she’d done it in this very spot, ten feet away, in fact. So he was probably stomping down memory lane that very moment.

Pig the pit bull, however, leaped out of the canoe, barking sharply, and paddled over to her. The pit whined, licking at her face and pulling at her shirt as if he was going to tow her to shore.

“Pig, get back here!” Carl stood suddenly, the canoe wobbling back and forth under his weight.

But Pig would not be deterred from his lifesaving mission.

“I’m fine,” she told the dog, petting his sleek reddish coat. Pig paddled toward the shoreline and climbed onto the grass, violently shaking the water off.

Maybe that’s what she should do, crawl onto the shore and run away. Or maybe she could hold her breath long enough to swim under Carl’s canoe and escape into open water. Duffy would be pissed about losing his boat, but it was a risk she was willing to take. Marianne chewed her lip. No, her lung capacity wasn’t nearly what it used to be.

Bravado it was, then.

“I’m swimming.”

Carl scowled. “You’ve got the entire lake. You have to swim in the one place I fish?”

“No. You’ve got the rest of the year to fish here,” she said, throwing her arm wide and bobbing below the surface. The strokes to right herself brought her within touching distance of the canoe. “Fish somewhere else.”

“You don’t own the damn lake. You don’t even live here.”

“All the more reason to be a gentleman and let me enjoy it while I can.”

Carl whipped off his baseball cap. “You are the most frustratin’ woman I have ever met.”

“Well, right back atcha.”

Years later, Marianne would not be able to explain what possessed her to reach up and yank at Carl’s belt buckle. But it seemed right and justified at the time. Even when the canoe tipped and his eyes went wide as he lost his balance and toppled over the bow.

He hit the water with a huge splash. Pig barked happily and spun circles on the thick grass, like this was the best game ever. Marianne righted the canoe just as Carl’s head shot up through the surface.

“Are you nuts?” he shouted, treading water easily, even with his heavy boots on.

“Didn’t anybody ever tell you not to stand up in a canoe?” she asked, tossing the few pieces of unsecured fishing gear back into his boat. She snagged his cap as it floated by and tossed it in the canoe.

“What is wrong with you?” he yelled, holding on to the side of the canoe, his face just a few inches away from hers.

Carl’s green eyes bored into hers, staring right through her. And in that moment, the bravado broke. So many things were wrong with her, but all she could say was “I don’t know!”

Frowning, Carl yanked her close and kissed her, the water sliding cool and sweet between their lips. His mouth moved just like she remembered, hard angles and smooth curves, as if he couldn’t breathe without her. Marianne wanted to weep for her own stupidity, for what she’d lost and what she was getting a taste of now. Keeping one balancing hand on the canoe, she slid the other into his hair and wrapped her leg around his hip. He groaned, sliding his tongue between her lips, pulling her even closer. She slipped her other arm around his neck, her added weight dipping them deeper into the water. It closed over their heads and still, they just kept kissing. Carl’s grip on her back tightened and he lifted them back above the water.

Behind Carl, she heard a bark and a splash. And just as she opened her eyes and turned her face, she saw an enormous canine tongue lashing out to swipe at Carl’s cheek. He yelped, “Aw, come on, Pig!”

Marianne burst out laughing as Carl wiped at his cheek. Pig nudged at her with his wet nose, but she gently pushed him back toward the shore. Carl leaned his forehead against hers, sighing deeply.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I shouldn’t be doin’ this. It’s not fair to you.”

“That’s never gotten in your way before,” he muttered, shoving away from the canoe and pulling her toward the bank. They flopped onto the grass. Staring at her, Carl emptied his boots of water and set them out to dry. Pig flopped his head onto Carl’s wet jeans, while Marianne tugged at her wet tank top to cover as much of her skin as possible. Carl scratched behind the dog’s clipped triangular ears.

“I deserved that,” she said.

“Yeah, you did,” he told her. “Now, what’s got you all wound up?”

She was quiet for a long while, trying to find the words. Saying it would make it real. Telling someone else would make it something she had to live with. “My dad’s sick.”

He nodded.

“You knew, too?” She threw her hands into the air. “What the hell? Am I the last to know?”

“In the family, yeah. No one else knows. But Duffy needed somebody to talk to.”

“Of course.” She sighed. “Can you tell me why no one thought I might need to know?”

“Nobody wanted to mess up your plans, not even me. I wanted you to go to school, Marianne. I wanted you to have the job you wanted, the life you wanted. I hoped that I would end up part of it. But even if I’m not, I still want you to have it. I’m not gonna lie, I was pissed at you. For a long time. And I was hurt the other night, when you told me you ran off because you thought I wanted to tie you down. But you did what you had to do to get what you wanted. And you shouldn’t feel bad about it.”

“Magical unicorn,” she muttered.

He pulled a face. “What?”

“Nothing.”

He wrapped an arm around her and leaned his head into the crook of her neck. “I’m just sayin’, you went about it in a shitty way. But I realized a long time ago, I can’t exactly get mad at you when I did the same thing, pulling away from my family to protect myself.”

“It’s not exactly the same thing,” she retorted. “I mean, it’s not like there’s a risk of Uncle Bob hiding stolen tractor parts in my house when I’m not looking. Uncle Stan, maybe . . .”

He snorted. “We both had to be selfish assholes for a little bit. I just stopped sooner than you did.”

She huffed out a laugh and smacked at his chest. He caught her arms and wrapped them around his waist.

“I really missed you,” she said into his wet shirt.

“I missed ya, too.”

Pig whined again and tried to insinuate himself between them. Marianne wasn’t sure whether he was jealous of her or Carl.

“If it makes you feel any better, I couldn’t really date anyone else after you. It never felt right,” she said. “None of the boys I met made me laugh with random Elvis references. None of them believed in Sasquatch. And none of them could change a lightbulb, much less rebuild an engine.”

“That does make me feel better, thanks.”

“They were also too damn clean.”

“Okay, that hurts my feelin’s a little bit,” he muttered.

“You say that because you don’t hear the indecent things I think when I smell motor oil.”

He cackled and squeezed her tight. She melted against him. “It’s gonna be okay. Your dad. No matter what happens. It’s going to be okay. Your family can handle it.”

She nodded, face still pressed against his chest. “I know.”

“And when you head back to school, I’d like to call or e-mail ya every once in a while, if that’s okay. No pressure. It’s just, I didn’t like not talkin’ to ya.”

She nodded. “If I had stayed in town, do you think we’d be married already?”

“Hell naw,” he scoffed. “I’ve got to have my freedom, woman. I’ve got wild oats that need sowin’. I’da probably gotten around to marryin’ you in another ten years or so.”

She slapped at him again and he guffawed. He kissed her again, chaste and sweet, the kiss of teenagers making promises. He whispered, “I’da married you whenever you wanted to get married, wherever.”

“Would you have worn your baseball cap at the ceremony?” she asked around the lump in her throat.

“No promises.”

IT HAD TAKEN SOME CONVINCING to get E.J.J. to agree to let her lead a meeting on her own. The three Trinkitt kids sat on one side of the table. Burt Beacham and George Pritchett sat on the other. While Laurie Trinkitt was keeping up the perpetual stink eye, Lemm and Roy seemed much more relaxed. Burt looked considerably less stressed than E.J.J., who was sitting in the corner of the funeral home’s break room with a fire extinguisher. Uncle Bob was lurking somewhere out in the hallway, waiting for shouting or the sound of punching.

Marianne didn’t know whether the fire extinguisher was for clubbing or extinguishing purposes. She only hoped the meeting didn’t come to need either.

Marianne cleared her throat. “I appreciate everybody coming in this morning, before papers get filed and this situation with Miss Maisie’s funeral arrangements becomes a horrifying legal situation that drags on for months. I think we can all agree that what we want is a compromise that honors Miss Maisie and makes everybody comfortable, because we’re not going to be able to make everybody happy. Can y’all promise that you’ll at least hear me out and respond in a nonscreaming, noncrazy manner?”

Burt and Roy immediately nodded. Lemm said, “I might could.”

Laurie remained silent. Lemm kicked her under the table. “Fine.”

“My proposal is that we follow Miss Maisie’s request and cremate her, after a tasteful visitation for her friends. Half of the cremains can be sprinkled over the dam in a private ceremony, just like Miss Maisie requested. And then the other half should be sent to this company, Creative Cremation Solutions.” She paused to slide pamphlets to each of them. “They take cremains and compress them into beautiful, one-of-a-kind pieces of glass art. You will have a piece of your mama to keep with you, something to remind you of her, that you can sit with and talk to when you feel the need to talk to her. And you still honor her wishes. I have an order here for four pieces, in blues and greens, which I understand were her favorite colors. All you have to do is sign this, as well as the agreement for the visitation and cremation services, and I will send it off as soon as possible. And since you’re the first customer we’ve used this service for, we can offer you a fifteen percent discount.”

Marianne said the last bit in a rush, like she was running out of air. And frankly, that may have been a real problem, because she forgot to breathe halfway through her spiel. She watched as the Trinkitts looked over the pamphlets. Mr. Burt was already smiling.

“I think that sounds real nice,” Mr. Burt said. “Maisie would have liked that, bein’ turned into art.”

Roy cleared his throat, glancing at his brother and sister. “I think we can live with this.”

“Burt’s right,” Lemm said. “Mama would have liked it.”

Laurie opened her mouth and Marianne winced, ready for the onslaught that was sure to come. “Can you mix some purple into my glass piece?” she asked quietly, making Marianne’s eyes go wide. “Mama braided purple ribbons in my hair every morning for three years because I wouldn’t wear any other color.”

Marianne was surprised to find her eyes growing a little hot at Laurie’s show of actual human emotion. “Sure thing, Laurie. That’s no problem. So we’re settled then? Everybody’s happy?”

They all nodded. Mr. Pritchett winked at her.

“We can agree that we will all behave like adults at the visitation? We will be civil and polite and not throw each other into floral arrangements?”

They nodded again.

“I’m going to need verbal agreements,” she said.

Behind her, E.J.J. snorted.

After the chorus of yeses, she slid the papers across the table for signing. E.J.J. finalized some last-minute details regarding Miss Maisie’s funeral suit and the floral casket spray. Marianne stayed quiet, reveling in her win, hoping it wouldn’t all fall apart when the tears started.

E.J.J. pulled her into a tight hug when the mourners left.

“Good job, butterbean,” he said, grinning at her. “I couldn’t have done better myself. Probably wouldn’t have, since I’ve never even heard of turning cremains into pretties.”

“It just took a little research,” she told him. “There are so many interesting options for people who want a reminder of their loved ones—jewelry, art, glass. I bookmarked all of the web sites so you can look them up later.”

E.J.J. pursed his lips and stared at his granddaughter until she added, “I will print out all of the information that you need.”

“Thank you, hon.”

Uncle Bob pulled her into his arms. “I’m so proud of you! That was some really good work, shug. I didn’t think we’d ever find a compromise, but you got them to agree to it and I actually saw Burt and Lemm shake hands in the hallway.”

She grinned, feeling a slight pang of guilt for calling the Trinkitts “racist assholes” earlier. No one in Lake Sackett, or anywhere else for that matter, boiled down to anything so simple. The Trinkitts had been hurting, and people in pain were easy to mistake for assholes.

Bob rubbed his hands. “I can’t wait to see what you make of Gossie Barker’s visitation. Those yahoos haven’t made it through a family event without an arrest since the Carter administration.”

Marianne smoothed Bob’s lapels and smiled beatifically. “Uncle Bob, I love you, but I quit.”

“What?” Bob cried. Grandpa E.J.J. raised his brows but kept his expression neutral.

“I don’t like working at the funeral home. Compromises with yahoos aside, I don’t think I’m good at it. And if I stayed, I’d resent you and this place and the family. I’d rather leave on a good note and find something that makes me happy—and help you on the rare occasion you really need it.”

“Are you sure this is what you wanna do?” E.J.J. asked. Marianne kissed his cheek and nodded.

“But I just got you back in the office,” Bob protested. “Everything runs smoother with you there.”

“Uncle Bob, you’re doing all the work, not me. I think you’re just bored and lonely. Maybe listen to audiobooks or something while you’re back there. Take some coffee breaks with Aunt Leslie to parcel out your day.” E.J.J. cleared his throat, and she added, “and by that, I mean your approved twice-daily fifteen-minute breaks.”

“Okay,” Bob said with a sigh. “But I’m still gonna call you when things get out of hand or when I need you to look up those web sites for me.”

“I will be happy to help,” she promised. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to catch up to Mr. Pritchett before he makes it to his car. I have something I want to discuss with him.”

8

LIKE SO MANY moments when her life seemed to be smack in the middle of an eight-way crossroads, Marianne sat at the end of the dock, staring over the water. The lake was oddly calm and quiet for a warm afternoon. Or maybe Marianne was just feeling quiet inside.

Mr. Pritchett had been more than happy to hire her on as his legal assistant. She would start the next week, unless his voice mail filled up again sooner. If it worked out, Marianne intended to make this her full-time, permanent job.

Calling the law school to defer her placement was much easier than she’d anticipated. For the first time in months, possibly years, she felt at peace with where she was, where she was going. For now, she was content. Maybe, one day, if she ever felt the need, she could pursue law school. Helping the Trinkitts settle their problems with Mr. Burt had given her a feeling of accomplishment that she hadn’t felt, well, ever. She had a purpose in Mr. Pritchett’s office, in a way that she’d never felt at her family’s business. A purpose on her own terms.

But she was not going to embrace Frankie’s whole estate planning idea. Because she was pretty sure having those few miles of separation between her office and the mortuary was necessary for her sanity.

She also needed some space from her mother. While Junior and Donna had both accepted Marianne’s withdrawal from law school with grace, even enthusiasm, pulling her mother outside for a private conversation hadn’t been as productive. Donna failed to see why Marianne was angry with her. After all, if Marianne had called more often, she would have known about her father’s medical tests and been kept up to date.

“You can’t do that,” she’d told her mom, pacing the dock behind E.J.J. and Tootie’s house. “You can’t use guilt to push me around when giving me the truth would have worked better and faster.”

“Well, if you’d just come home instead of avoidin’ us because of some boy, this wouldn’t have been a problem,” Donna shot back, in a sterner tone of voice than Marianne had ever heard her use.

“He wasn’t some boy and it didn’t— You know what? This isn’t about me. This is about you and your repressed emotions turning you into someone I don’t even recognize. You need to talk to someone, Mama. Because right now, I’m havin’ a real hard time forgivin’ you.”

“Well, pardon me if that’s not a big worry for me when I’m carin’ for your sick daddy,” Donna called after her as Marianne stomped into the house.

Marianne was gonna have to get her own place soon.

The radio in the Snack Shack switched from an old Patsy Cline song to “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” her favorite Elvis love song of all time. She and Carl had spent hours arguing over whether it was better than his favorite, “Love Me Tender,” which Marianne had always found vaguely whiny.

Marianne could really use fewer cosmic messages from Elvis in her life right now.

She sighed as she heard boots clomping down the wooden slats behind her. “Duffy, I don’t care what Aunt Leslie says, I’m not going to eat deep-fried Kool-Aid.”

“Well, that sounds disgustin’.”

She turned to find Carl standing behind her, backlit by the sun. Pig was sitting on his haunches, rubbing his head against Carl’s knee. “Hey.”

“Car parts are here and I got started this morning,” Carl drawled. “I’ll have it done by next week. I thought you’d wanna know.”

“Great,” she said with little enthusiasm.

“So I guess that means you can just drive on back to school anytime you want.”

“About that,” she said. “I’m probably not gonna be leavin’ for a while . . . a good while.”

“What?” He sank onto the dock next to her. Pig took this as an invitation to crawl into Carl’s lap and lick his face.

“With Daddy being sick, there’s just too much goin’ on to leave right now. I got a job working for Mr. Pritchett in his office this summer.”

“But what about law school?”

“There’s a paralegal program at UGA. I can apply some of my undergrad credits and get my certificate in less than a year. Mr. Pritchett said I could keep my job at his firm while I’m in school and take on paralegal duties when I qualify.”

“Is that what you want?”

“I think it is,” she said, nodding. “I think I would be happy doing that. I like the work. And I can do it now rather than waiting three years until I’m qualified,” she said. “And . . . you’re here. And if you’re interested, after we spend more time together and work out what I’m sure are a lot of issues still hangin’ over our heads, maybe we can talk about datin’ again. If you’re interested, that is.”

He smiled. “Well, of course, I’m . . . Naw, naw, I won’t accept that. I know you’re not staying just for me, but in a year or two, I’m gonna want to marry you all over again. And you’re gonna get antsy. You’re gonna get scared and feel trapped and you’re gonna blame me or your family because you didn’t go. And I can’t take you leavin’ me again. Or worse, stayin’ and hatin’ me. I’d rather not have you at all than have you leave now.”

“It’s not because I’m scared. It’s because I’ve seen the outside world and I know I can live without it. I don’t think I can live without you or this place or the time I have left with my dad.”

“Well, we ain’t gettin’ married right away. You’re living here for a while on your own, to make sure you can stand it. And you’re not going to turn down law school, you’re going to do one of those deferment things, so if you decide you want to go in a few years, you can.”

She lifted her eyebrows and he added, “Duffy told me about it.”

“Okay,” she said. “I have already decided to defer, but thank you. I will stay here. And when you’re ready, I’m gonna marry the hell out of you.”

He chuckled, kissing her lightly. “Sounds good.”

“Wanna go to Deer Tick Bay and do some ‘fishin’?” she asked, nodding to Duffy’s boat.

He smiled at her. “Yes, I believe I do.”

“And if we’re gonna get married, you’re going to have to move up your renovation schedule, because I insist that my house have floors.” She stood, pulling him up to his feet.

Pig barked sharply and put his paws on Marianne’s thigh. Again, she suspected that Pig was actually trying to push her off the dock due to canine jealousy. She was going to have to start keeping beef jerky in her pockets.

“Are you going to be picky about every little thang?” Carl asked, helping her climb into the boat. Pig barreled in behind her.

“Just about floors. And ceilings and indoor plumbin’.”

Duffy came ambling out of the bait shop and startled at the sight of his sister and best friend stealing his boat. “Hey, what are y’all doin’?”

“Should we tell him?” Marianne asked.

“Naw, he punched me in the teeth senior year when he realized I’d ‘deflowered’ you. My jaw still aches when it rains. He’s got this coming.”

So Marianne just waved at her brother while Carl started the outboard engine. Duffy jogged along the dock, yelling, “Carl! Do not take my sister to Deer Tick Bay! It’s indecent! It’s against the Bro Code! Manny! Resist his charms! Do not defile my boat!”

“Tell Daddy I’ll be back after dinner!” she yelled.

“Manny!”

Carl laughed as he steered the boat toward the sunset. “This is gonna be fun.”

Read on for a sneak peek at

SWEET TEA AND SYMPATHY

A Southern Eclectic Novel

Available in November from Gallery Books

1

MARGOT CARY LEANED her forehead against the warm truck window as it bounced along the pitted Georgia highway. She closed her eyes against the picturesque landscape as it rolled by. Green, green, green. Everything was so effing green here.

GREEN WAS NOT HER LUCKY color. It certainly hadn’t blessed the opening of the botanical garden’s newly completed Wesmoreland Tropical Greenhouse. Maybe it had been a mistake to carry the green theme so far. Green table linens, green lanterns strung through the trees, down to emerald-green bow ties for the catering staff. Weeks later, she still remembered the terrified expression on one waiter’s face when she caught him by the arm before he carried his tray of crudités into the party space.

Despite her glacial blond beauty, the younger man practically flinched away from her touch as she adjusted his tie. Margot would admit that she’d been a bit . . . demanding in organizing this event. She had taken every precaution to make sure that this evening’s black-tie opening was as smooth as Rosaline Hewitt’s recently Botoxed brow. She’d commissioned a silk-leaf embroidered canopy stretching from the valet station to the entrance to prevent the guests’ hairstyles and gowns from being ruined by the summer rain. She’d researched each invitee meticulously to find out who was gluten-free or vegan and adjusted the menu accordingly. She’d arranged for two dozen species of exotic South American parrots to be humanely displayed among orchids and pitcher plants and a flock of flamingos to wade through the manufactured waterfall’s rocky lagoon.

She was not about to have all of that preparation undone by a cater waiter who didn’t know how to keep a bow tie on straight.

“Go,” Margot said, nodding toward the warm, humid air of the false tropical jungle. He moved silently away from her, into the opulently lit space.

Margot turned and tried to survey the greenhouse as it would appear to the guests, the earliest of which were already filtering into the garden, oohing and aahing. Calling it a greenhouse seemed like an understatement. The glass-paneled dome reached four stories into the sky, allowing the tropical plant specimens inside plenty of space to stretch. Carefully plotted stone paths wound through the flower beds, giving the visitor the impression of wandering through paradise. But knowing how much Chicago’s riche-est of the riche enjoyed a nice soiree, the conservators had been smart enough to add a nice open space in the middle of the greenhouse to allow for a dance floor. She’d arranged elbow-high tables around the perimeter, covered in jewel-tone silk cloths. Gold LED lights cast a hazy sunset glow over the room, occasionally projecting animated fireflies against the foliage. And since society’s ladies would never do something so inelegant as visit a buffet, the waiters had been informed to constantly circulate with their trays of canapés in a nonobvious, serpentine pattern around the enormous shrimp tower in the middle of—

Wait.

“No,” Margot murmured, shaking her head. “No, no, no.”

She snagged the next waiter to walk through the entrance and took his tray. The sweet-faced college kid seemed startled and alarmed to have the chief planner for this event grabbing him by the arm. “You, get two of your coworkers and very quickly, very quietly, very discreetly get that shrimp tower out of here. If anyone asks, just tell them that you’re taking it back to the kitchen to be refilled.”

The poor boy blanched at the brisk clip to her tone and said, “But—but Chef Jean was very specific about—”

“I don’t care what Chef Jean was specific about,” she said. “Get it out of here now.”

The waiter nodded and pulled away from her into the gathering crowd.

Margot stepped forward into the fragrant warmth of the greenhouse, careful to keep her expression and body language relaxed. She was aware that, while professionally dressed in her black power suit, she was not nearly as festive as the guests in their tuxedos and haute couture gowns, but she was perfectly comfortable. She’d attended hundreds of events like this growing up. She would not be intimidated by some plants and a pretentious wannabe Frenchman. She pressed the button of her earbud-size Bluetooth and whispered, “This is Margot. I need to speak to Jean.”

She could tell by the way her words were echoing in her own ear that the head chef of Fete Portable had taken his earpiece out—despite Margot’s repeated requests to keep a line of communication open with her—and set it on the stainless steel counter in the makeshift kitchen. She blew out a frustrated breath. Jean LeDille was not her preferred caterer for high-profile events, but the de facto hostess of tonight’s opening—Melissa Sutter, first lady of Chicago and head of the botanical garden conservators’ board—had insisted on using him. So far he’d been temperamental, resistant to the most basic instruction, and a pain in Margot’s Calvin Klein–clad ass. And when she was done with this event and had secured her partnership at Elite Elegance, she would have Jean blacklisted from every Chicago party planner’s contact list. Theirs was a close-knit and gossip-driven circle.

Someone in the kitchen picked up the earbud and said, “Ms. Cary, he says to tell you he’s unavailable.”

Margot gritted her perfect white teeth but managed a polite smile to the head of the opera board and his wife as they passed. Jean wouldn’t be able to get a job making a clown-shaped birthday cake by the time she was done with him.

“So I guess I’ll just have to make myself available to him, then.”

Margot’s assistant, Mandy, a sleek brunette who reminded Margot of a Russian wolfhound in four-inch heels, fell in step behind her. “Make sure that tower is gone. You have two minutes.”

“On it,” Mandy snapped, and peeled off after the hapless waiters.

Margot pushed through the heavy plastic curtain that separated the greenhouse from the kitchen tent. Far from the muted music and golden-green light of the greenhouse, the tent was ruthlessly lit with fluorescents and heating lamps. Jean’s shouts filled the air, demanding that the canapé trays be restocked tout de suite.

Jean was a stocky, balding man with thick, dark eyebrows and an unfortunate mustache. His chef whites were splattered with various sauces and he sneered—actually sneered—at Margot as she walked into his kitchen.

“What are you doing in ma’ kitchen?” he demanded in an exaggerated French accent. “I tell you before. No outside staff when I am creating.”

“Jean, would you explain to me why there is a shrimp tower in the middle of my venue?”

“I was overcome by the muse this morning. I decide to build you a shrimp tower. Only four hundred dollars extra. I do you favor, eh?”

“Wait. Is that shrimp salad on the crostini?” Margot asked, stopping a waiter before he left with his tray of appetizers. “Because we agreed on poached quail eggs. Mrs. Sutter, the hostess of tonight’s event, whom you’ve cooked for on several occasions, is allergic to shrimp. As in, she can’t even be around people who are eating shrimp because she might come into contact with the proteins. I wrote it on everything. Everything.”

Margot motioned to the field refrigeration unit where she had taped a neon-green sign that read PLEASE REMEMBER THAT MRS. SUTTER IS HIGHLY ALLERGIC TO SHRIMP.

Jean waved her off. “I do not read the cards. My sous chef reads the cards.”

“Jean. Drop the French accent that we both know is about as real as that ridiculous hairpiece and tell me what you are feeding the mayor’s wife.”

The chef, whose real name was John Dill, shrugged and in his natural, Midwestern voice said, “The market didn’t have enough quail eggs, so I took the shrimp. It’s not a big deal. If she’s allergic, she’ll know not to touch it. People make too much of their food allergies anyway.”

“It’s just lovely to know that someone with that attitude is making food for innocent bystanders,” Margot snapped. She called out loud enough for the entire kitchen staff to hear, “Eighty-six the shrimp crostini. Throw them out and take the bags out of the tent. All of you wash your hands—twice—and any utensils that have touched the shrimp—also twice. I need one uncontaminated staff member to make a special shrimp-free plate of food for Mrs. Sutter so we can feed her tonight without poisoning her. Get it done, now.”

Jean was seething, but Margot didn’t give a single damn. Mandy popped through the plastic curtain, a stricken expression on her angular face.

“There’s a problem with the tower,” she said. “It’s too heavy to move. But they’re working on disassembling the shrimp trays to bring them back in before people notice.”

“I don’t care if it’s made of concrete. I need it—” Margot’s response was cut short by a strange honking ruckus from the greenhouse, followed by screams and crashing . . . and running?

One of Margot’s golden eyebrows rose. “What is that?”

Mandy grimaced. “Don’t flamingos eat shrimp?”

Margot dropped her clipboard and her headset to the ground and scrambled through the plastic curtain. “Oh, no.”

The flamingos were making a run at the shrimp tower, pink wings flapping, pecking at the waiters who were attempting to remove the shellfish. The guests were falling all over one another trying to get away from the shrimp-frenzied birds and in the process had knocked over several cocktail tables and the votive candles on top. Those candles had set fire to the tablecloths, which set off the greenhouse’s sprinklers and alarms. The parrots did not appreciate the clanging alarms or the sudden scramble of people. They broke free from their perches and were flying around the greenhouse, leaving “deposits” on the guests in protest. Oh, and Mrs. Sutter was purple and covered in hives.

Margot gave herself ten seconds to surrender to the panic. She let her stomach churn. She let her ice-cold hands shake. She allowed herself to hear everything and nothing all at once. In her head, she saw her career going up in flames with the tablecloths. The promotion and partnership she’d worked for were disappearing before her eyes in puffs of smoke. Everything she’d planned, everything she wanted in life, was slipping out of her fingers because of some misplaced shellfish.

And then Margot put a lid on her anxiety and did what she did best. She put out fires metaphorical and literal. She called an ambulance and the fire department, grabbed the EpiPen from Mrs. Sutter’s purse, and jabbed her in the thigh. Hell, she even took off her pumps and wrangled the shrimp-seeking flamingos back into the lagoon.

But the damage was done. The news photographers who’d prepared themselves for a boring evening shooting glamour poses gleefully snapped photos of society matrons in soaked designer gowns and runny makeup dashing for shelter from the sprinklers. A guest who happened to be a member of PETA started screaming at Margot for mistreating the flamingos while trying to herd them away from (attacking) the guests. And a conservators’ board member handed her an invoice for the thousands of dollars in rare orchid species that had been trampled in the melee.

The next morning, an exhausted Margot sat slumped in the offices of Elite Elegance as her boss, Carrington Carter-Shaw, slapped newspapers with headlines like FLORAL FIASCO and REAL-LIFE ANGRY BIRDS! on her desk. One particularly cheeky tabloid had printed a picture of Margot beating the smoldering remains of a matron’s hairpiece with a wet napkin under the headline FLOWER POWER F***-UP!

“How could you let this happen?” Carrington cried, her carefully blown-out dark hair dancing around her heart-shaped face. “We’re the laughingstock of the Chicago social scene. Guests from last night are trying to stick us with dry-cleaning bills, medical bills—Michelle Biederman claims a parrot flew off with her two-karat diamond earring! The mayor’s office has contacted us—twice—to call our business license into question. I had to move three guys from the mail room just to handle the incoming phone calls. Margot, you’re my star! My rock! You can make a backyard potluck birthday party look like a black-tie gala. You’re the planner I call when it’s clear in the first meeting that the client is absolutely batshit insane. What happened?”

Margot wanted to blame the untested Chef Jean and his “inspired” impromptu shrimp, but ultimately the fault rested with her. She’d lost control of the party. She’d lost control of the food. She’d lost control of two dozen species of birds.

“I don’t know,” Margot mumbled, shaking her head. She took a prepackaged stain wipe out of her Prada clutch and dabbed at a questionable blotch on her lapel. “It all happened so quickly. I—I know, at this point, the partnership is off the table—”

“Partnership?” Carrington scoffed. “Honey, I can’t even keep you on staff. You’re professional poison. I’m going to have to fire you and do it in a very public manner—I mean, picture the polite urban equivalent of putting you in stocks in the town square and pelting you with rotten fruit—so people know that our company is safe to use again.”

Margot let loose a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. She nodded. In some way, she’d been expecting this. She knew it would be rough for a while and she would have to put off some bullet points in her five-year plan, but she could handle this. She had contingency funds and a secret contact list of important people who owed her favors.

Margot cleared her throat and tried to straighten her rumpled suit jacket. “And what, you’ll shuffle me out to one of the branch offices in the suburbs and I’ll organize bar mitzvahs until this all blows over?”

Carrington frowned. “No, Margot. Fired. As in employment permanently terminated. The partners are willing to give you a three-week severance in recognition of the work you’ve done for us. And I’ll write you a positive recommendation letter. But that’s it.”

“But I’ve worked here for almost ten years. I’ve put in eighty-hour weeks. Ninety during the holiday party season. I don’t have a social life because I’m always here. I haven’t been on a date in more than eight months.”

“Yes, I know. That’s why you get the third week of severance pay. Really, Margot, I think we’re being more than generous here, considering the fallout from this fiasco.”

As Margot walked out of Elite Elegance’s plush offices with a banker’s box full of her belongings and a severance check in hand, she told herself that it would be okay, that this was what backup plans were for, that this situation couldn’t possibly get worse.

It got worse.

Stage one of Margot’s plan had been to retreat to her apartment to regroup, polish up her résumé, and compose a list of companies she could apply to, but her unit’s new tenants kept stopping by to measure for new flooring and curtains. Just a week before the “Floral Fiasco,” she’d given up her lease in preparation to move to a newly purchased condo in Wicker Park. Between the down payment she’d saved and the raise she was supposed to get with her promotion, she would have been able to afford it. But the day after she was fired, she’d gotten a call from the mortgage officer handling her condo loan. Mrs. Meade had seen the news about the greenhouse incident and her firing, and informed Margot that without a job, the mortgage company could not guarantee her loan. The only good news was that the mortgage company was willing to return 70 percent of her down payment. So now, with her lease running out and her condo being sold to someone else, Margot was effectively homeless.

And still, it got worse.

Without a job, she couldn’t get an apartment in a decent building. And the buildings where she could get an apartment were not places where she wanted to live. And she could not find a job. Anywhere. Receptionists laughed and hung up when she called the best event-planning companies in Chicago. Receptionists from second- and third-tier event-planning companies in Chicago also laughed at her. She couldn’t get the companies in New York or Los Angeles to call back. Hell, she couldn’t get companies in St. Louis to return her calls. She still had her savings, but thanks to Mastercard and her monthly expenses, they were dwindling quickly.

Her friends weren’t returning her calls or messages, either. And she couldn’t turn to her adoptive father for help. Gerald hadn’t spoken to her since her mother’s funeral three years before. And she’d promised herself that she wouldn’t take a dime after her parents made their last tuition payment. She still had the shreds of her pride.

The shreds were costing her. She was three days away from living in the storage unit where she’d moved her stuff, sitting at her breakfast bar—because it was the only table space she had left—actually filling in a JobLink profile, when a Skype notification popped up on her laptop. The message said it was from “hotsy-totsy45.”

Margot frowned. She used this account for after-hours and long-distance consultations with clients. She definitely would have remembered a client nicknamed hotsy-totsy45. Leaning back from the screen, she clicked decline.

Blowing a long breath out through her nose, Margot continued to fill out the JobLink form. Another notification from hotsy-totsy popped up.

“Still a ‘no,’ creep,” she muttered, clicking decline again.

But hotsy-totsy would not be denied. And given the amount of chardonnay Margot had consumed just for the sake of not having to move it out of her apartment, it wasn’t surprising that her hand slipped a bit and she clicked accept.

“Damn it!” she grunted, trying to close the chat window before it opened. She did not want to witness the latest in creative junk shots currently being embraced by the Internet’s weirdos. But instead of the expected random nudity, Margot’s screen was filled with the face of an adorable little granny lady with a cloud of snow-white hair and Dalmatian-print reading glasses balanced on the tip of her nose.

“Hello?”

A brilliant smile lit up the granny lady’s face, showing teeth too white and too even to be original parts. “Well, hello there! It took me a little while to track you down, but here you are!” the lady crowed in a Southern drawl so pronounced that Margot had trouble processing what she was saying at first. “You look just like I thought you would. A lot like your mama, mind, but you got a bit of your daddy in there, too. Of course, I thought you’d be a little more polished up, but I’m guessing you haven’t left your house in a while.”

Margot caught sight of her appearance in the little preview window in the corner of the screen and winced. She looked like someone who was unemployed. She was wearing a grubby Northwestern sweatshirt. Her carefully highlighted blond hair was piled into a haphazard topknot. She was wearing her thick-rimmed black glasses, making her hazel eyes look owlish and too big for her face. She hadn’t worn makeup in days, so her skin had taken on a cheesy appearance in the blue light of the computer screen.

“I’m sorry, do you know my parents?” she asked. As friendly as this lady might be, she didn’t exactly look to be Linda and Gerald’s speed. Linda McCready, a nobody from nowhere with traces of a Low Country accent and a toddler daughter in tow, had managed to snag Gerald Cary, MD, while she was working as the records clerk in the hospital where the handsome British expat practiced surgery. She had spent considerable time and energy clawing her way into the upper middle circles of Chicago society. Linda Cary would have gone blind before she wore Dalmatian reading glasses.

“Well, your mama and I were never close, but your daddy is my nephew, so I guess you could say I know that sad-sack face of his pretty well,” the woman said with a chuckle.

Margot’s jaw dropped. Her stepfather had adopted her when she was four years old. But considering that he was from just outside London, it was unlikely he had relatives in Georgia. “You know Gerald?”

“No, honey, your daddy. What do you young people call it—your ‘biological father.’ Stan McCready. I’m your great-aunt Tootie.”

“Beg pardon?” Even Margot couldn’t be sure which part she was questioning—the “biological” bit or the ridiculous nickname. Even in the South, people knew better than to name their children Tootie, right?

“I’m Stanley McCready’s aunt, honey.”

Stanley McCready. Margot slumped on her bar stool. She’d never met her father’s family. Linda had made no secret of her “unfortunate” first marriage to a man named McCready, but she’d referred to it as a youthful mistake she’d corrected when Margot was barely three years old. Stanley was a heavy drinker, Linda had insisted, a train wreck of a man who couldn’t provide for them. After Linda left, he’d almost immediately given up his rights to his daughter without so much as a court motion.

Margot didn’t know where he lived. She couldn’t remember what he looked like. Her mother had never even shown her a picture, insisting that it would be disloyal to Gerald. Neither Mr. McCready nor his family tried to contact her in thirty years, which was fine with Margot. She didn’t have room in her life for an irresponsible drunk who couldn’t be bothered to send so much as a birthday card. And frankly, she resented the idea that her father’s family only reached out now, when she was at her lowest.

And it wasn’t even her father, just some wacky great-aunt with a ridiculous name.

“You know, I thought you’d have that nasal-sounding Chicago accent, but you sound like you should be having tea with the queen. So proper and prim. I suppose that’s your mama in ya. Did she make you take those diction lessons?”

“No, I just like using all the letter sounds.”

The woman snorted a bit and said, “My point is, honey, I’ve been looking for you for weeks now, after I saw the video of your party on YouTube. I spotted you and knew you had to be Linda’s daughter.”

“YouTube?” Margot winced. “How many hits did it get?”

“Hundreds of thousands! Honey, you’re your own meme!” Tootie exclaimed. Suddenly, a window popped up in the corner of Margot’s screen, showing one of the press photos of Margot herding the flamingos away from the shrimp tower with giant print reading NO CAN HAZ SHRIMP, FLAMINGOZ! NO CAN HAZ!

Margot buried her face in her hands. She’d spent most of her twenties carefully policing her own social media posts so as not to damage her professional reputation. And now this. Also, her great-aunt seemed to be awfully tech savvy for a woman who looked to be in her eighties.

“Well, thanks for contacting me and mocking me with age-appropriate Internet humor . . . and dredging up a bunch of unresolved emotional issues,” Margot muttered. “But I’m going to have to sign off now.”

“Oh, sure, honey, I’m sure you’re busy with your job search. How’s that going?”

“I’ve submitted quite a lot of résumés,” Margot said, trying to sound casual.

“Any interviews yet?” Tootie pressed.

Margot floundered a bit while searching for an answer. “It’s early still. You don’t want people to think you’re too eager.”

“Not one callback, huh?”

Margot pursed her lips. “Not one.”

“Well, that’s just fine, because I have a proposition for you.”

Margot’s instinct to say no right that second was quelled when the bank paperwork that showed her checking account balance caught her eye. “What sort of proposition?”

“We need an event planner here at the family business. We’d be willing to provide room, board, and a generous salary.”

“How generous?”

“Well, now, you’ve got to remember that the cost of living is much lower here as opposed to the big city,” Tootie cautioned.

“How generous?” Margot asked again, and Tootie’s blue eyes sparkled behind those reading glasses.

“Here, I’ll send you the compensation package the family put together.”

Another box popped up on Margot’s screen. She clicked on the file and grimaced at the salary, which was about one-quarter of what she’d made at Elite Elegance. “How much lower is the cost of living there? Also, where is ‘there’?”

“Did you notice that the package includes health insurance?” Tootie asked. “When does your coverage run out?”

“Soon,” Margot grumbled. “Also, I noticed you didn’t answer the question about location.”

“And I’m guessin’ from the packing boxes in the background that your lease runs out pretty soon, too. So really, I could see why you would want to stay where you would be homeless and at risk of huge medical bills, in a city where you could be mugged or run down by a taxi or have a windowpane fall on you from twenty stories up. That’s far preferable to coming down to Georgia, to a town where the crime rate is next to zero.”

Margot had never passed the Mason-Dixon Line, not even to Florida. Her mother had always insisted on family vacations to Lake Geneva, to New York, to France. Anyone could go to Disney World, she’d told Margot; Linda was trying to give Margot the world. Margot didn’t know how well she would function in a rural environment, much less a place where she would constantly hear the banjo music from Deliverance in the back of her head.

“But my life is here. My friends are here. I need to stay where the jobs are. And right now, that’s in Chicago.”

“So you lay low for a few months in God’s country, get to know your kinfolk, get that city air out of your lungs, and then relaunch yourself at people who will have forgotten your foul-up once someone else messes up worse. It will be good for you,” Tootie told her.

Margot stared at the offer. Tootie had thought of everything: financial compensation, meals covered, a clothing allowance, and health insurance. She’d even attached a picture of a small cabin on the edge of a lake, labeled housing. And another photo of a huge family posed in front of a lakeside dock. Tootie stood with an older man, holding his hand. Two couples in their fifties stood behind them next to a man with deep frown furrows barely touched by his lopsided smirk. His arm was thrown around a twentyish girl with purple-streaked hair in pigtails wearing a black T-shirt with a pink radiation symbol on it. Another couple stood on the far left, a man in his thirties with curly reddish-blond hair hugging a laughing blonde. The sun was setting behind the family and they looked so happy together, so at ease with one another. And it felt like a punch to the chest. These people didn’t miss her at all. They didn’t feel a Margot-shaped hole in their family, they’d just moved on without her. It shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did. She’d spent a lot of time on visualization exercises so it wouldn’t hurt. And yet . . .

She cleared her throat. “The whole family put this together? Even my . . . even Stan?”

“Everybody,” Tootie said emphatically.

Margot skimmed the top of the document and caught sight of the letterhead, which read McCready Family Funeral Home and Bait Shop.

“Funeral home? Wait, you run a funeral home? And a bait shop?”

“Well, it’s more of a full-service marina, but yes! For four generations now! You’re part of a Lake Sackett institution, hon.”

“Why would a funeral home–slash–bait shop need an event planner?”

“Well, the baby boomer generation is dropping like flies around here, so we’ve got more business than we can handle. We’ve needed to add another planning consultant for a while now, and when I saw your video and looked up your background, I knew you’d be perfect.”

“I’m an event planner. For major society parties, galas, charity balls, that sort of thing.”

“Well, a funeral is a kind of event. And some of the considerations are the same—timing, speeches, music, food, and such.”

“Oh, I just don’t think I could—”

Suddenly, the lights flickered out and her refrigerator died with a whine. Because she’d shut off utilities in preparation for the move to the condo that was supposed to have taken place the week before. But she had nowhere to go. And no health insurance.

She pursed her lips. “When can I start?”

Loved Save a Truck, Ride a Redneck? Check out the first full-length novel in the Southern Eclectic series from Molly Harper.

A big-city planner finds true love in a small Georgia town—perfect for fans of Kristan Higgins and Amy E. Reichert!

Sweet Tea and Sympathy

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Molly Harper is the author of two popular series of paranormal romances, the Half-Moon Hollow vampire novels and the Naked Werewolf shifter trilogy. She is also the author of the Bluegrass series of contemporary ebook romances. A former humor columnist and newspaper reporter, she lives in Kentucky with her husband and children, and is currently working on the next Southern Eclectic novel. Visit her on the web at mollyharper.com.

FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR: Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Molly-Harper

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BOOKS BY MOLLY HARPER

THE SOUTHERN ECLECTIC SERIES

Save a Truck, Ride a Redneck

Sweet Tea and Sympathy

THE HALF-MOON HOLLOW SERIES

Accidental Sire

Where the Wild Things Bite

Big Vamp on Campus

Fangs for the Memories

The Single Undead Moms Club

The Dangers of Dating a Rebound Vampire

I’m Dreaming of an Undead Christmas

A Witch’s Handbook of Kisses and Curses

“Undead Sublet” in The Undead in My Bed

The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires

Driving Mr. Dead

Nice Girls Don’t Bite Their Neighbors

Nice Girls Don’t Live Forever

Nice Girls Don’t Date Dead Men

Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs

THE NAKED WEREWOLF SERIES

How to Run with a Naked Werewolf

The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf

How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf

THE BLUEGRASS SERIES

Snow Falling on Bluegrass

Rhythm and Bluegrass

My Bluegrass Baby

ALSO

Better Homes and Hauntings

And One Last Thing . . .

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2017 by Molly Harper White

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Interior design by Michelle Marchese

Cover design by Min Choi

Cover images © Dave and Les Jacobs/Getty Images (couple); © Aneta Jungerova/Shutterstock (dog)

ISBN 978-1-5011-7893-1

Table of Contents

- Dedication
- The McCready Family Tree
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- ‘Sweet Tea and Sympathy’ Excerpt
- About the Author
- Copyright