Rhythm and Bluegrass
Author: Molly Harper
Date: 2013-10-07 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Romance; Contemporary; Humour; Adult
Description: In the second e-novella in Molly Harper’s Bluegrass series of contemporary romances, two people determined to fulfill their own agendas come head to head—and find love in the process. Kentucky Tourism Commission employee Bonnie Turkle is up Mud Creek without a paddle. When she gets permission from the state historical society to restore McBride’s Music Hall in Mud Creek, Kentucky, to its former glory, she thinks the community will welcome her with open arms. Instead, her plans interfere with a proposal to sell the property to a factory that would bring much-needed jobs to the town. Even though
Publisher: Pocket Star

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Contents

Acknowledgments

1. In Which I Make a Poor First—and Second—Impression

2. In Which I Spot the Mayor Topless

3. In Which Will Drops the Proverbial House on My Apartment

4. In Which I Solve the Problems of the World with WD-40

5. In Which I Survive the Library Apocalypse

6. In Which I Tangle with Marsupials, Both Living and Dead

7. In Which I Seek Shelter from the Storm

8. In Which I Indulge in Cupcake Therapy

9. In Which I Earn a Scarlet Letter of My Very Own

10. In Which My Butt Catches the Bull by the Horns

11. In Which I Discover the Many Layers of Miss Martha

12. In Which I Enjoy a Nice Plate of Mystery Meat

13. In Which I Confront a Previously Unknown Musical Icon

14. In Which I Fall Into a Sex Booby Trap . . . Which Sounds Redundant

15. In Which I Become the Office Grump

16. In Which I Agree to Sunday Dinner and Inappropriate Lingerie All in One Day

How to Run with a Naked Werewolf Excerpt

Don’t forget to click through after

Rhythm and Bluegrass
for an exclusive sneak peek at the next delightful novel by Molly Harper

How to Run with a Naked Werewolf

Available January 2014 from Pocket Books

Acknowledgments

I attended college at a magical place called Western Kentucky University, in Bowling Green. The entire campus was built at a forty-five-degree angle, with dorms at the bottom of the hill and classroom buildings at the top. My theory is that the founders did this to filter out the weaker underclassmen.

In my four years at Western, I learned a lot about my unique second hometown. Bowling Green is the only place in the world where Corvettes are manufactured. It’s where filmmaker John Carpenter grew up, so if you watch Halloween carefully, you’ll hear the names of local landmarks. (In no way did my friends and I turn this into a drinking game. Really, Mom.) But in all the time I spent on Western’s campus, I heard only bits of information about the Quonset Auditorium. My advisers made allusions to blues greats playing at a local watering hole that was currently a tire store. But I never understood the scope of the Quonset Auditorium’s influence on local culture until I saw a Kentucky Educational Television documentary on the Quonset. At the first commercial break, my husband turned to me and said, “You’ve got to find a way to fit that into a book.”

Thanks go to Kristie Lowry of WKU Library Services and Amber Ridington, whose documentary and thesis, “Rovers, Wrestlers and Stars,” helped me shape my own Quonset Hut, loosely based on the auditorium. The real Quonset Auditorium closed in 1959 and was demolished in 2003. I am sure that the owners and the residents of Bowling Green are far more dignified and sensible than any citizen of Mud Creek. And I can only hope that I have reflected my love for the town in this book.

1

In Which I Make a Poor First—and Second—Impression

Frantically unpacking my flaming vehicle while it merrily burned on the side of the road was not how I wanted to start my time in Mud Creek.

My dad was one of those “prepared for anything” Boy Scout types who believed you shouldn’t be allowed to drive a car unless you could recite the owner’s manual from memory. Unfortunately, there is no entry in the manual for “what to do when your engine catches fire.”

It had started off as such a nice morning, a drive through the mountains of eastern Kentucky to the far southeastern, almost-Virginia part of the state. I was headed to Mud Creek, home of McBride’s Music Hall, to salvage a treasure trove of priceless musical artifacts before the long-shuttered building was bulldozed to make room for industrial space.

McBride’s was a microcosm of American pop culture history. It was one of the first establishments in Kentucky that allowed interracial dancing. It was a hot spot for blues and country-and-western performers, which was almost unheard of. Bill Monroe played that stage; so did Hank Williams Sr., Little Richard, James Brown, and Ray Charles—musicians I loved so much for their simplicity and honesty. Everybody who was anybody in the music scene in the fifties and sixties cut their teeth at McBride’s. And that time capsule of precious musical history had been sealed off, untouched, for almost fifteen years, waiting for me to sift through the remains. My fingers were practically itching.

Mud Creek was just far enough from the mountains of Appalachia to avoid scary negotiations with curvy, high-altitude roads, but it was still pretty remote. Eastern Kentucky was practically a state all its own. To people like me, raised on the relative “flatlands” of western Kentucky, bluegrass geography was always a bit of a muddle. People seemed to assume the state ended at Louisville. Point of fact, Western Kentucky University was located in south central Kentucky. The westernmost counties—McCracken, Ballard, Fulton, and Trigg—just sort of stuck out from the state’s face like an unfortunate preoperative nose.

As I got closer to Mud Creek, the roads seemed to get progressively rougher, the landscape craggier and more . . . beige. I hadn’t realized that this state, known for green pastures, even had places that could turn various stages of dull brown, but eventually the ground, the vegetation, even the rocky cliffs that seemed to rise up from nowhere and then drop into nothing were all beige. It turned out that looking at earth-toned earth for extended amounts of time was excruciating, so I stopped at a diner for waffles and to add to my collection of truck stop snow globes. Then I stopped at a fruit stand that, as it turned out, sold illegal fireworks. And then, the moment I spotted the battered green MUD CREEK, POPULATION 5,304 sign on the side of Highway 15, something inside my engine hiccupped, rattled, and then ignited in one last extinction burst of effort.

I veered off to the shoulder as smoke rolled out from under my hood in ominous tendrils, pulling flames behind them like streamers. For a moment, all I could do was stare. This was actually happening. My car was on fire. How did that even happen outside of an action movie?

Wait a minute, burning cars led to spectacular explosions in action movies.

I yelped and yanked the wheel too quickly, nearly sending my SUV tumbling into the roadside ditch. The flames were dancing across the bubbling white paint in earnest now, and it took my fingers a few minutes to catch up to my brain’s message of “unbuckle your seat belt and get out of this Hindenburg on wheels!”

To my eternal shame, I was not one of those “good in a crisis” people. It took three tries before I managed to unbelt and jump out. And even then, all I could do was stand on the pavement, wring my hands around the strap of my shoulder bag, and mutter some variation of “Nononono” over and over. I just stood there trying to blow out the roaring remains of my SUV like it was a giant birthday candle.

And then I saw my electric-blue laptop bag through the back window.

“Lola!” I squealed. “My baby!”

I scrambled to open the hatchback and started hauling boxes to the side of the road like a one-woman moving crew. Of course, Lola was stuffed securely behind my seat, behind all of the other equipment, in an impossible-to-reach spot, and I needed my supplies too much to just toss them out. First, I had to carefully unload the digital display boards and my projector. Then the acid-free storage sleeves and boxes. The flames were climbing higher and Lola was still stuck behind a stack of boxes. Grunting, I climbed over the tailgate, wedging myself between the ceiling of the car and the boxes, reaching for Lola’s bag.

This was so my fault. Because I spent so much time on the road, I was allowed to drive my personal vehicle, under certain special requirements, such as regularly scheduled maintenance by the state’s garage staff. Sadie Hutchins, assistant director of marketing at the Kentucky Commission on Tourism—and my direct supervisor—had been telling me for weeks that I had to bring my SUV in for a complete check. But I’d been so busy wrapping up my other projects to prepare for a long-term stay in Mud Creek that I’d sort of skipped it, figuring I’d take the car in for an oil change when I got into town. Sadie’s “I told you so” would likely involve a three-page memo. Signed by the governor.

I vaguely registered the sound of tires crunching over the gravel behind me.

“Y’all right there, ma’am?” a thickly accented voice asked.

I turned around to face the person, who was not being terribly helpful, seeing as I was very obviously not all right at the moment. Good Lord, he was a country music video come to life: red-plaid shirt untucked, jeans frayed and worn at the knees, thick sandy-blond hair mussed by the red baseball cap he was tucking in his back pocket. His eyes were hidden behind silver aviator sunglasses. A thin white scar across his chin underlined his mouth, like he’d suffered an accident just to emphasize those pearly white teeth.

One might think that, living in Kentucky for most of my adult life, I ran into the Backroad Cowboy type often. But I lived in Frankfort, the state capital. The most rural experience I got was visiting cousins in Smithland, where we held reunion picnics in the family cemetery. And on the rare occasion when I encountered the Backroad Cowboy type, he was usually looking past me to the girl not wearing a Jem and the Holograms T-shirt. Therefore, my dating history was chock-full of perfectly passive vegan fellas who would be more useless than I was in this situation.

Mr. Cowboy, on the other hand, seemed tensed to act if I needed him, though his expression was oddly comical. Like he ran across damsels in flaming distress all the time and expected my brand of twitterpated impotence in the face of inferno-esque car failure. I would have found this insulting, but (a) he was right and (b) he was so very pretty.

I would take time to be embarrassed on behalf of my gender later.

Thunderous rumbling from the direction of the engine brought me out of my cowboy ogling. “I’m trying to get my baby out of the car,” I called, my voice choked by the gray fog slowly seeping into the backseat.

“Your baby?” Mr. Cowboy flinched, as if the whole “vehicular inferno” thing had just become significantly less funny, and dashed to the driver’s side. He jerked the back door open and started yanking plastic storage bins and pitching them over his shoulder. I winced at the way he was tossing things haphazardly against the hot pavement.

“Where’s the car seat?” he yelled, throwing boxes marked BEDROOM and KITCHEN in neat block script. “Why the hell would you put so much crap back here with a baby? What the— What is all this?”

“Car seat?” I coughed, waving my hand in front of my face to ward off the smoke. “What are you talking about?” He moved just the right box of files and I wrenched Lola’s bag free.

“Yes!” I cried, clutching the bag to my chest. “My baby!”

My irritated Samaritan looked at me as if I might be insane. I grabbed my suitcase and scooted out of the back of the SUV just as the flames started to creep through the air-conditioning vents. He was waiting for me by the tailgate and helped me to my feet. Together, we dragged my stuff as far away from the car as possible.

“That is not a baby,” the Cowboy growled as I clutched the laptop bag to my chest. He took off the sunglasses, tucking them into his shirt pocket. The piercing blue eyes were not happy with me or my baby. “You scared the piss outta me for a damn computer?”

Oh, right. Most people would construe “my baby” as an actual living child. This would be what my best friend, Kelsey Wade, referred to as a “Bonnie-size abuse of language.” I would say that was unfair, but I had just convinced a man that my nonexistent infant was at risk of serious injury in a car fire.

“If you knew how important Lola was to me, you would understand,” I said as he took the bag from me and scanned me from head to toe in a completely nonsexy, checking-for-boo-boos sort of way.

“Ya named your damn computer,” he scoffed, wiping his sooty hand across his forehead. “And ya named it Lola, to boot. Is there much gas in the tank?”

I shook my head. “Almost empty. I didn’t want to stop when I was so close to town.”

“Don’t ya have a fire extinguisher?”

“Yes, under the front seat,” I told him. “Which is currently on fire.”

“Hmm, that won’t help, will it?” he said, pursing his lips. Why, oh why, did he have to purse his lips like that? He probably had some beautiful girlfriend at home with long blond hair and one of those Southern-girl smiles that could sweeten iced tea from across the room. I’d bet she never got padded bras from her grandmother in her Christmas stocking. I’d bet her high school nickname wasn’t “Fraggle Eyes.”

I really needed to get myself under control. Everything I owned was burning and I was busy seething in resentment over a stranger’s hypothetical girlfriend. Maybe there were hallucinogenic qualities to burning tires?

Mr. Cowboy noticed my irritated expression and said, “Well, I don’t wanna upset ya, but I think you’re gonna have a hard time drivin’ away from this one.”

It took all I had not to laugh. Because laughing would probably lead to hysterical crying, and I didn’t want to scare the nice man. The windows clouded with black film as smoke rolled out of the back gate, boiling up toward a cloudless late-summer sky. And that’s when it hit me. My truck was gone. My phone charger. The Ray Charles biography I’d been reading. The soft, worn-in denim jacket—stolen from a college boyfriend—that I kept slung over the passenger seat. They were all gone. I plopped down on top of one of the plastic bins and stared at the ruined mess of my SUV.

I’d spent the better part of five years driving around in that car, visiting schools, remote towns, obscure corners of the state where my services were needed. I would probably be less upset if my apartment burned down.

Then again, I didn’t really have an apartment. I had a spare room in Kelsey’s apartment. I traveled too much to merit getting my own place. Usually I stayed in one location for a week or two, long enough to alienate the keepers of the local history collections and make friends with the motel’s night clerk. Then I moved on to the next town, the next task, overseeing small historical restorations, creating special exhibits at public libraries or local museums, leading special curriculum sections at schools studying state history.

But this project would be a little different—instead of living in a motel for a few weeks, I would actually get an apartment of my own while I was here, which I was really looking forward to. I’d leased a one-bedroom in a complex called Fernwood Estates. I had visions of a pretty little white building overlooking Main Street, or, if I was lucky, a view of the actual forest, which would be considerably better than the brick wall my window faced back home. I would have a kitchen, a living room, a bathroom I would clean myself. I could pretend I had a home of my own for a while instead of illegally piggybacking on poor Kelsey’s lease.

Apparently my completely spacing out disturbed the Samaritan, who put his large, warm hand on my shoulder and gave it a little shake. “Don’t ya worry. I’ll call Fred and set up a douse or a tow, or whatever needs to be done here. Fred runs the fire department and the wrecker service, which is pretty damned convenient. He’ll fix ya right up.” He pulled a battered silver cell phone from his back pocket and started dialing.

“Thank you,” I said, moving my plastic seat a bit farther from the heat of the burning car, into the scrubby grass just between the shoulder and the shards of rock lining the ditch. “Really. I know I shouldn’t have gone back into the truck for my things, but I need all of this for work. Plus—” I raised Lola’s bag, making him roll his eyes a bit. “Baby.”

“What sorta work do ya do?” he asked, the phone pressed against his ear. His attention wavered as someone picked up on the other end of the line. “Hey Fred, it’s me. I’ve got a pickup for ya, mile marker seven by the population sign. Yeah, you’ll love it. It’s extra crispy.”

“Not funny,” I told him. He held up two fingers to measure “this much” funny. I shook my head, but I was biting my lips to stop a smile from forming.

I continued checking the boxes for damage as he said, “Wait, what?”

All of the teasing mirth drained out of the Samaritan—whose name I was going to have to pick up sometime soon—and he bit out a curse. “How?” He groaned. “Again? No, it doesn’t really matter how much sewage it is. It’s sewage. There’s no sewage scale. We’ve gotta get it stopped up.”

The Cowboy stepped away from me and continued his conversation. I only heard “library” and “panty hose.” Well, that didn’t sound good. I supposed between “burning vehicle” and “ankle-deep sewage,” the burned-plastic smell of smoldering upholstery wasn’t so bad. He turned back to me with an apologetic expression on his face. “Look, I’m sorry to leave ya like this,” he said, “but there’s an emergency, and I’m the only one who can fix it. I really have to go. Would ya rather ride into town with me?”

“No, thanks. From what I understand, there’s raw sewage wherever you’re going.”

His eyes narrowed, even as his full lips quirked. “Sharp ears.”

“I tend to pick up on words like ‘sewage,’” I told him. “I’ll just wait here for Fred. What’s Fred’s last name?”

“Flintstone.”

My mouth fell open. “Really?”

“For at least the next month.”

“Did he lose a bet?” I asked.

He shook his head in mock sadness, a small smile playing on his lips. “Never put your faith or your dignity in the hands of the Cincinnati Reds. You’re sure ya don’t want to come with me?” he asked. I chuckled. “I’ll call Fred later and check on ya. Maybe I can help ya get a rental out here. We don’t have an agency in town, but—” He cursed softly when his cell phone rang again. He checked the screen and groaned. “I’m sorry. I really have to go.”

“Well, thank you,” I said. “I appreciate your attempted baby-saving.”

He opened the driver’s side door of his battered red-and-silver early-model pickup, which was marked with a hand-lettered logo, MUD CREEK HOME REPAIRS. He tossed me a bottle of water, dripping with condensation. “Just stay back from the truck, in case it decides to blow. Drink that. And when Fred shows up, try not to stare at his eye.”

“What about his eye?” I called as the man climbed into his truck. “Hey!”

His sandy head bobbed out of his truck cab. “Yeah?”

“What’s your name?”

“Will, and yours?”

“Bonnie!”

“I’ll catch up with ya soon, Bonnie!” he yelled, grinning as he fired up his engine and pulled onto the highway. “Welcome to Mud Creek!”

2

In Which I Spot the Mayor Topless

Fred—whose real last name turned out to be Farrow—arrived, sirens blaring, in a fire truck that looked like it had been purchased sometime during the Eisenhower administration.

Being short, I was used to people towering over me. But Fred was a veritable giant, at least six foot five, with a shaved head and a tattoo of a timber wolf howling on his forearm. There was nothing wrong with either of his eyes, as far as I could tell, but my staring at them to try to determine what was wrong with them seemed to put him off—which may have been Will’s point. Despite his size and the fact that he was wearing a T-shirt that read ONE “HAVE A NICE DAY” AWAY FROM SNAPPING underneath his firefighter’s gear, he was very kind about the whole extinguishing-my-car thing. He didn’t even ask, “How the hell did this happen?” Which I was still wondering myself.

Fred was apparently used to working as a one-man fire crew, putting out orange traffic cones, unfurling the hose, and dousing my car with quiet competency. I tried to look somewhere other than his eyes, but my only other option was looking at my burning truck, and that was just painful. And then I tried not to look like I was looking, which made me look like I had a neck twitch.

Fred was pouring chemical-absorbent gravel in a rough outline around my SUV when he caught sight of my neck-twitchery. “Damn it, did Will tell you I had a funny eye? I’ve told him to stop doing that. He thinks he’s funny. Jackass.”

I shook my head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. It’s just hard for me to make eye contact with people who are cleaning up the messes made by my boneheaded decisions.”

Fred snorted as a slightly newer tow truck pulled up to the shoulder. “Speaking of boneheaded . . .”

Fred’s tow truck driver, Joe Bob, was a bearded teddy bear whose beer belly was so big, you’d think it would interfere with his ability to steer. Bald as an egg, he was dressed a bit more formally, in a stained red polo shirt advertising Fred’s Tow and Tire and dungarees held up with both a belt and suspenders. His accent wasn’t quite as thick as Fred’s, and his grammar was considerably better. But he and Fred were clearly pretty close friends, given the way they taunted each other over penis size and work ethic. Joe Bob either hadn’t noticed or had forgotten I was there, because he was on the verge of implying that Fred was in fact born without genitalia, or, as he put it, was “smooth like one of them Ken dolls,” when he rounded the back bumper of my vehicle and saw me. The goofy grin melted away and he straightened, adjusting his pants around his belly.

He cleared his throat and, with a much more sober tone, said, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but in my professional opinion, your car’s a loss. I can haul it to the scrap heap for ya.”

“I’d appreciate it. Is there someplace in town where I can get a rental?” I asked. “I’m going to need one.”

“Naw, I’m sorry, we don’t have anything like that. But I can take ya as far as Murphysboro myself. Maybe you’ll be able to find something there.”

“Oh, I don’t need to go on to Murphysboro. I’m staying in Mud Creek.”

“You’re movin’ here?” Joe Bob marveled. “Well, what do ya think about that? We haven’t had anybody move here in years. Plenty of people move out, but nobody moves in. It’s like one of them roach motels, only backwards.”

“We tried puttin’ that on the town’s water tower, but folks didn’t see the charm in it,” Fred said drily.

I snickered, but covered it with a cough. “Smoke,” I told Fred, who smirked.

My fantasies of a pretty apartment overlooking a scenic thoroughfare evaporated as Joe Bob and I followed Fred’s fire truck into town.

Mud Creek’s Main Street had a drab, ghost-town sort of feel to it. The rolling hills and thickets of trees were a tarnished setting for a cracked paste-glass “jewel.” It was like someone had told Mother Nature that this was the most depressing town in America and she had vegetated accordingly.

Was “vegetated” a word?

I knew that the town was facing significant budget problems and had one of the highest unemployment rates in the state. The last big employer had been GloboMap, a manufacturer of global positioning units that had closed because more and more people were using their phones or in-car units. The company had shut down the plant and its three-hundred-plus jobs, stripped it, and sold off the parts. This had increased the county’s unemployment rate to more than 40 percent, a number that hadn’t improved in the last two years.

From what I could see, the town had managed to attract only a handful of national chains like McDonalds and Walmart, and those buildings looked like they hadn’t been updated since the days of Grimace and the Fry Guys. Many of the shop windows were papered over with newsprint or spray painted with the words “For Rent.” The only building with a fully functional neon sign was the Gold Rush Pawn Shop. But an old-fashioned diner called the Dinner Bell had the fullest parking lot.

While he yammered on about the Wildcats’ chances this year, Joe Bob made a bit of a show dragging the carcass of my SUV down Main Street. The few people milling around on the sidewalk actually stopped and stared as we drove past. I slipped lower in my seat and attempted to cover my face with my hand.

“Why ya hidin’ your pretty face, there, Miss Bonnie?”

“Because I’m embarrassed, Joe Bob. This was not the first impression I wanted to make on my new neighbors.”

He grinned, a pearly split in his windburned, weathered face. “Embarrassed? Heck, this is nothin’. This isn’t even your fault. Last summer, Sissie McNabb found her husband, Sammy, passed out behind the wheel of their Honda in front of the Suds Bucket. She took off all the inside handles, the window cranks, and the lock buttons. Then she locked him inside and had me tow him through town with a sign on the back of the car that said, ‘Drunk Asshole.’”

“That would be worse,” I admitted as Fred flashed the fire truck’s lights and turned toward the station.

“The worst part was that she misspelled ‘asshole’ as ass-whole, with a ‘W.’ That just made it more embarrassin’.”

I grimaced. “So what’s going on with the library?”

“Oh, Crazy Penny locked herself in the ladies’ room and flushed a bunch of panty hose down the toilet.” He sighed. “She said it would keep the aliens from tracking her signal, or some such thing. She does this once or twice a month. Miss Earlene, the librarian, would have chased her out a while ago, but she’s got a real tender heart and she feels sorry for Penny. Anyway, this time, I guess one of the trees in the library yard has grown its roots through the pipes. The hose got stuck on the roots and backed the whole damn system up. Poor Miss Earlene is hauling books up the stairs like the Great Flood is coming.”

“Well, in a way, she’s not wrong,” I said, shuddering.

Joe Bob screwed up his face, clearly trying not to laugh. I’d noticed that most small towns had a “Crazy (Insert Name Here)” who served as a cautionary tale to everybody else. And for some reason, they always gravitated back to the library. It was enough to make grad students reconsider mastering in library science.

“Poor Miss Earlene.” Joe Bob sighed again. “I’ll go by later and see if she needs any help. Speaking of which, where should I drop ya, Miss Bonnie? I know I’m supposed to haul your car to the dump, but where am I supposed to take you?”

I glanced at the clock and groaned. What with the destruction of my transportation and the total loss of most of my belongings, I’d forgotten that I had a meeting with the mayor, Tommy McGlory, scheduled at three. It was a courtesy call with Mayor McGlory acting as a liaison for the McBride family, in which he would give me the keys to the music hall. Technically the Mud Creek Municipal Bank owned the building, but thanks to small-town courtesies, the McBride family still held the keys and controlled access to it. I would give assurances that I would practice due diligence while sifting through the contents of the music hall, keeping an eye out for particularly valuable items and giving the town and the McBride family full credit when I turned the items over to various state museums for their musical heritage collections.

Back before my car blew up, I’d figured I’d charm Mayor McGlory into submission, find my apartment, and go about moving. I’d had a perfectly respectable pantsuit in my truck for this sort of thing, but I had to assume the poly-blend that Kelsey hated so much had probably liquefied in the fire. At least I had a clean floral-print blouse in my shoulder bag. I would just have to meet His Honor in my jeans. I caught sight of myself in the side mirror and winced. I should probably wash the soot smudges off my face.

It would be really difficult to take me seriously if I looked like Urchin #3 from Oliver!

I stood in front of what was supposed to be the town square. I held up the town’s brochure, which looked like it had been printed in 1984. It showed a badly lit but beautifully bricked town hall with a stunning beaten copper cupola and bell tower. I lowered the brochure to reveal a caved-in metal shell dangling over a crumbling brick exterior.

“Hmm,” I murmured.

I’d read news clippings about the collapse that destroyed Mud Creek’s historic town hall in 2005. The hall, which had also served as the county courthouse, was being refurbished for the town’s centennial when a construction crew managed to knock out a key support column for the cupola. The weight shift brought the cupola crashing into the lobby, taking out another column, which caused a chain reaction that destroyed most of the interior walls. The civic staff barely had time to evacuate the building before it crumbled in on itself like a deflated balloon. The town’s insurance carrier objected to paying, claiming that the construction company’s insurer was responsible. They got into the legal equivalent of a slap fight in civil court, which prevented any sort of payout for the city and forced its government to set up “temporary” workspace in a FEMA trailer in front of the ruined town hall. “Temporary” had stretched into more than five years, and the city was no closer to getting a new building, but no one had the heart to tear down the old one.

I straightened my clothes and tried to look as professional as possible as I navigated the creaky wooden steps. Joe Bob had been kind enough to drop me at a gas station down the street so I could wash up a bit in the restroom. I had a clean face and was freshly lip-glossed, but that was about as good as it was going to get. I knew I wasn’t exactly unfortunate looking, even in the jeans and blouse ensemble. My dark hair was pulled into a neat bun. My skin was good, if a little pale. My features were delicate and my lips were full. My main problem was my eyes. They were a perfectly acceptable blue, but they were huge. Hence the “Fraggle Eyes” nickname. And they tended to express every single emotion in my head, so I sucked at poker and never seemed to pull off even the whitest of lies.

Like when I told Joe Bob that I was perfectly fine hauling all of the boxes and bins from my truck around town while I met with the mayor and my landlord. The truth was, I didn’t even know how I was going to get to my new apartment without a car, much less how I could haul a mobile office around with me. Joe Bob insisted that I leave my stuff with him. At first, I thought maybe it was some sort of collateral, in case I didn’t pay for the tow, but he honestly seemed worried about how I would manage to tote all those rescued boxes around town. If this was the sort of reception I’d be getting from my new neighbors, I would enjoy living in Mud Creek.

I opened the wobbly storm door, sure that the resounding squeak would announce my presence to anyone within a five-mile radius. The town hall’s reception area was an open room paneled in wood laminate and occupied by two huge desks—but no people. “Hello?” I called.

I glanced around at the cheap imitation-wood walls, noting the yellowed photos hanging in random groupings. Clearly, city employees had grabbed whatever they could as they fled the crumbling town hall, whether it was a 1982 employee softball team photo or a picture of Henry Naysmith, Mud Creek’s first mayor. An enormous color-coded map on one wall showed the town’s business zones and residential spaces. The desks had dozens of snapshots in mismatched frames strewn across them, with the exception of one that was almost empty, stacked with neatly arranged file folders and bearing a nameplate that read SHERIFF J. FELTER.

I noticed an enormous plastic jar with a peeling label stating MAMA’S GIANT DILL PICKLES. The sticker was partially covered with a homemade white cardstock sign that read SWEAR JAR. The jar was half-full of quarters, which made me wonder about the staff’s verbal habits.

I heard a thump from behind a closed door across the room. “Hello?”

There was no response beyond another soft thump. Would it be rude to open the door? Would I find something that would emotionally scar me for life? My gentle knock on the door was enough to disengage its wobbly latch from the doorjamb. The door swung open and—

“Yipe!” I yelped.

It was Mr. Roadside Cowboy, stripped to the waist, leaning against a cluttered desk, scrubbing scrupulously at his hands with wet wipes. I chose not to think about his reasons, considering the earlier “raw sewage” conversation. Still, it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant sight. He was all smooth golden skin, slightly darker in the forearms and neck. He wasn’t gym built, but he had a pretty respectable set of pecs on him. And his belly was far less keg-shaped than Joe Bob’s.

“Hey!” he exclaimed, grinning at me as if I hadn’t just barged in on him half-dressed. “There’s the bright spot to my day. Come on in!”

“Hi,” I said, glancing around me. The dirty shirtless man was inviting me to come closer. Why was the dirty shirtless man inviting me to come closer?

“Did Joe Bob drop ya off?” he asked, slipping on a blue plaid shirt.

“Yeah . . .” The plaque on the door read MAYOR’S OFFICE. The nameplate on the desk read MAYOR WILL MCBRIDE. Where the heck was Mayor McGlory? And I knew the name McBride should be setting off some sort of bells for me, but I’d had a really long day, Will was shirtless, and all of this was triggering my internal babble response, which could get me into trouble if it switched to “audible” mode.

I cleared my throat and commanded myself to take a deep breath and produce one—just one—coherent thought. “You’re the mayor?”

A full sentence! Progress!

“Guilty,” he said cheerfully as he buttoned the shirt. It covered up all of that distracting tan skin, but the pattern did make the azure of his eyes pop, so it was a draw in terms of trying not to ogle him. “Sorry we got interrupted earlier, but it was definitely an emergency. The plumbing at the public library— Well, I’ll spare you. Thank God it was over my pay grade and we had to call in a septic-tank man. I used to think it was kinda gross that Greg rode around town in a service truck with a skunk on the side, but now I understand.”

I would take time to be properly grossed out by that later. Right now, I was having a hard time adjusting my well-constructed “flattering an older city official in exchange for full cooperation” schemes for this new audience—a man who had seen me ineffectually fluttering in the face of fire and heard me refer to an inanimate object as my “baby.”

“You didn’t have to come by the office, but I’m glad ya did because now ya have no choice but to let me take ya out to dinner.”

I quirked an eyebrow. “I don’t?”

“It’s an old Mud Creek law—save a damsel in distress, take her out for chicken-fried steak at the Dinner Bell. If you refuse, you’ll be breaking a hundred years of sacred local tradition. There’s a curse and everything,” he promised. “Seven years’ bad luck and premature hair loss.” I burst out laughing. “What do ya think happened to Joe Bob?”

I ventured, “Turned down by a damsel in distress?”

“Naw, he ate her chicken-fried steak while she wasn’t lookin’.”

I pursed my lips. “Nice.”

“I have an appointment at three, but if ya like, you can take your stuff to the motel down the street and I’ll pick ya up around six?”

Oh, right. His appointment, with me. In which I had to charm him. I gave him my best smile, the one Sadie called the “resistance to the Disney princess is futile” smile.

“I don’t think that’s going to be necessary. I am your three o’clock appointment. Bonnie Turkle,” I said, extending my hand toward him.

His face went slack for a moment, mouth gaping, before he recovered and gripped my hand in his big, warm paw. “You’re the fancy-pants historian lady?” he exclaimed. “Well, what do ya know about that?”

“Quite a bit, actually, since I’m the fancy-pants historian lady,” I said, chuckling.

“Well, between the fire and the raw sewage, I guess we’re on even ground with the whole not-great-first-impression thing, huh?” he asked, eyes a-twinkle. Good Lord, dozens of women must have lost their panties to that twinkle.

Focus, Bonnie. Focus.

Focus on those strong, warm fingers wrapped around mine and how I could feel every ridge and scar on his fingertips. What did he do to make his hands so rough? And how would they feel, for instance, on other parts of my body?

“Don’t worry, I washed it after the sewage,” he said, glancing down at our joined hands.

Focus on letting go of his hand.

I gave him an awkward smile and relinquished control of his limb. “Oh, no, I was just wondering what happened to Mayor McGlory. I spoke to him just a few weeks ago to set up this meeting. Was he booted out of office or something? And how the heck did you get elected so young?”

“Tommy McGlory needed to retire two weeks ago after his third heart attack. Nobody else wanted the job. We held an emergency election and I drew the short straw. Sad to say, SpongeBob SquarePants got two more write-in votes than me. But since he’s a cartoon and all, he couldn’t serve.”

“Some people have no sense of humor about fictitious public officials,” I said solemnly.

And there went his twinkle again. He was going to have to stop doing that if I was going to string more than one coherent sentence together. And suddenly, I remembered why the name Will McBride sounded so familiar.

“You’re doing that squintin’ thing again. It’s adorable, but it leaves me wonderin’ what you’re thinkin’.”

“No, I’m sorry, I was just thinking—your last name is McBride?” I said, shaking my head, praying that tenuous mental connection I was making between my research and the name was the result of misfiring, overstressed synapses. “I’m assuming that you’re related somehow to the family that owned the music hall?”

He nodded. “My grandpa George built the place.”

My mouth dropped open. “So you’re going to just bulldoze it for the sake of, what? A tire plant? Chicken processing? Are you going to work for a company that makes those little plastic things that keep price tags on shirts?”

He mumbled something under his breath.

“What was that?” I asked.

“ComfyCheeks Underwear,” he said again, a blush staining his cheeks. “We’re in very early, very delicate negotiations with the company to build one of their largest manufacturin’ sites right here in Mud Creek. The whole town is kinda countin’ on it to pull us out of—pardon the expression—the economic toilet. But the management’s only willin’ to discuss plans if they can build on the McBride’s site.”

“What about the old GPS plant location?” I asked. “Can’t they retrofit the old plant to meet their needs?”

Will shook his head. “The building’s the wrong size and doesn’t have the right electrical setup. Besides, the music hall’s close to the highway and has easy access to the railroad. And yes, for the record, I would be lookin’ for a job there, too. The mayor’s position doesn’t exactly offer full-time pay. The guys who clean trash off the highway get paid more than I do.”

ComfyCheeks was one of the largest manufacturers of tighty-whities in the known universe. Their “cheeks at ease” commercials were Super Bowl staples. And they’d just expanded their line into boxer briefs . . . which explained the need for a new factory. So they wanted to destroy a priceless musical legacy to make man-panties.

And now would be a good time to remember that I was depending on Mayor McBride’s goodwill in order to get access to the building and said priceless musical legacy.

“Well, I hope it works out for you.” I cleared my throat and attempted a more cordial, less judge-y tone. “And if there’s anything you want me to save for you from the building, just let me know. I wouldn’t want to take anything your family would want to keep as a memento.”

He shook his head, distaste curling his lips. “I don’t want anything from that place. It’s taken up enough of my family’s time and energy.”

“All right, then.”

He stared at me. And I stared back. I had no idea how to continue this conversation. He’d left me no verbal detour to take. This was why I envied Kelsey. She was always able to come up with some snarky quip to bring awkward conversations back to some talking point. Well, okay, I envied her for that and the fact that she didn’t have to shop for jeans in the junior boys’ department.

“I’m sorry,” he told me. “I’m makin’ you uncomfortable. It’s just a sore subject, that’s all. Not your fault.”

I nodded. “I’m sorry. I feel like we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot . . . a couple of wrong feet . . . We’ve gotten off on a centipede’s worth of wrong feet.”

“I’ll try to overlook it if you will.” He laughed and the easy smile returned. “I don’t suppose you wanna go out to the site and look around? I don’t feel right lettin’ ya set down stakes in town unless you know what you’re gettin’ into.”

“Well, Joe Bob was going to come by and pick me up . . .”

He plopped a Mud Creek Home Repairs cap over his sandy hair. “I can call him and tell him to meet us at your place later. Your landlady knew you’d be comin’ by and left your key with me.”

My lips quirked. “If this is a ‘take the stranger out of town limits and drop them in the middle of nowhere’ scenario, I think you should know I carry a really large can of pepper spray.”

He glanced toward my shoulder bag. “Really?”

“Well, it’s sealant for decoupage. But it still stings like crazy.”

He snorted. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

3

In Which Will Drops the Proverbial House on My Apartment

It was enormous.

It was a wreck.

It was an enormous wreck.

I’d read up on Quonset huts, prefabricated metal buildings manufactured at Naval Air Station Quonset Point in Rhode Island during World War II. After the war, the buildings became popular as school annexes, dormitories, and hospital wards because they were quick, easy, and cheap to construct. I also knew that they were quickly disappearing because most of them were now falling apart.

I’d seen it before, of course, on a weekend road trip in college, when my roommate insisted on visiting “Kentucky’s unsung musical mecca.” Never room with a theater major, kids. But that had been in the winter, when I was able to blame the gloomy, forlorn state of the building on the cloudy skies and scant patches of ice. Now, the building was naked, unvarnished, and I could see I had my work cut out for me.

It would be okay, I told myself. I wasn’t afraid of hard work. I had made lemons into lemonade before. And sometimes, I surprised everybody and made grape juice instead. I. Could. Do. This.

I took a deep breath. Pep talk over.

I knew the music hall had seated more than four hundred people. But somehow, I didn’t remember the building being so big. You could put a tennis court in that thing and still have room for stadium seating. The shape reminded me of a halved cylinder of canned cranberry sauce—you know, the kind that leaves ridges in the jelly—turned on its side. The wintry-blue metal glinted dully behind a broken neon sign that had once read McBride’s Music Hall in fancy curlicued script. The windows were coated in a thick layer of dust, barely allowing me to glimpse the dark interior. The few remaining tables were topped with overturned chairs, giving the hall a somber feel.

The building was weathered but whole. The glass-block facade was intact, if dulled and dirtied by time. The reports I’d read on the place called it “art moderne,” which is apparently a bit like art deco, only less deco and more industrial. The ticket window had been smashed a long time ago, but it was nothing a decent glazier couldn’t fix.

My research on the place had been facilitated through my connections at Western Kentucky University’s Folklore Department. I’d earned my bachelor’s there and the staff was more than happy to help an alum, sharing their archived microfiche and oral histories. Locals had called McBride’s “Mud Creek’s hot spot” back when the postwar music scene was booming and veterans and their sweethearts flocked to dance halls to two-step. George McBride built this place when he came back from World War II because he saw the opportunity to provide a venue for Mud Creek. George was a man who appreciated a big impression, so when he ordered his Quonset building, he bought the biggest one available. He was willing to rent the stage to anyone willing to pay twenty dollars, no matter their color or preferred musical genre. His empty wallet and easy manners made him a darling on the country-and-western circuit and what was known as the “chitlin circuit” for early rhythm-and-blues performers.

Before the interstate was built, the highway through Mud Creek was a vital artery between Nashville and Cincinnati. In those days, artists needed to tour to attract an audience and sell records, and acts big and small had to make gas money somewhere between the Apollo in Harlem and the Grand Ole Opry in Tennessee. McBride’s was the place to see and be seen.

“Your dad took over in the late 1970s, right?” I called over my shoulder.

When Will didn’t answer, I looked back to see that he was keeping his distance, leaning against his truck, sunglasses hiding his eyes. He stared at the ground as if the sight of the building was somehow painful.

“Will?”

Will cleared his throat. “Yeah, a bit before I was born. Gran was getting sick and Grandpa George took her down to Florida to retire. Other bars opened in town. The buildin’ started to show its age and Dad threw good money after bad tryin’ to patch it up. The crowds started shrinkin’. And then, in the eighties, everything changed. The bands wanted big stadium gigs and videos on MTV, not some dinky little stage with ‘character.’ Every once in a while, one of the greats would show up for a visit out of respect for my grandpa, but by the time I was a teenager, they were retiring and dying off, so that came to an end.”

He kicked some gravel with the toe of his boot. “Dad just couldn’t draw the big crowds. Even the little names didn’t want to play here anymore. Dad tried to limp along, but he shut the doors in . . . 1995, I guess. He died a few months later, and we had to hand the property back to the bank.”

“I’m sorry, Will. Really, I am.”

Will shrugged. “Ancient family history.”

I stepped closer, shielding my eyes against the glare of the late-afternoon sun as I peered through the front windows. The dimly lit interior walls were cedar, covered in posters and black-and-white photos. In the back of the hall, an enormous stuffed black bear stood guard near the entrance to the dressing rooms. Just inside the door, I could see a faded, peeling poster advertising a Johnny Cash performance. The historian in me itched to barge in and carefully remove the yellowed poster from the wall. Sunlight and unregulated air were top enemies of historical documents. And that poster had been exposed to both for more years than I cared to think about.

But I knew that if I walked through the door now, I wouldn’t stop with just the poster. I would stay at the music hall, sorting and sifting in a historian fugue until I came to hours later, discovering I was hungry, filthy, and standing in a darkened building with no power in the middle of nowhere.

The room was practically frozen in time. The bar and stage were still intact. The grill still had tickets hanging over it, for cripes’ sake. Someone had been waiting a very long time for their cheeseburger basket. How could the McBrides not have done anything to pack this stuff up and save it? I glanced over my shoulder toward Will, and given his forlorn expression, I didn’t have the heart to ask him.

“It’s going to be a lot of work, pickin’ through all that stuff,” he said.

“I’m not worried,” I told him. “I restored a train car diner in Possum Trot that had been abandoned and then occupied by about fourteen generations of raccoons. A little cleanup doesn’t scare me.”

His smile was sad and a little lopsided as he pressed the keys into my hand. “Well, I’m glad somebody’s gonna get some enjoyment out of it.”

“Depending on what I find, I imagine that a lot of people are going to get some enjoyment out of it,” I told him. “I hope that I find enough artifacts to share with museums all over the state.”

“Artifacts? A bunch of old posters and junk?”

“Well, we can’t all go looking for the ark of the covenant,” I told him.

He groaned. “Aw, you can’t go around makin’ Indiana Jones references and not expect me to ask you out.”

“It’s very tempting,” I assured him. “But right now, I just want to get to my apartment, change out of my smoky clothes, and perhaps eat food that I didn’t buy from a gas station.”

Will absently rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and gave me what I could only describe as a “bad news” face. “Yeah, about that. Your new place isn’t exactly an apartment.”

It turned out that leaning my head against the cool glass of the truck window, while soothing, was also a very effective way of accidentally falling asleep in the truck of someone that I didn’t know that well.

I jerked awake as Will made a sudden right turn. I wiped at my cheeks, praying I wouldn’t find evidence of drool on my face.

“Hey there, Sleepin’ Beauty,” he said, grinning at me. “You’re a mumbler.”

“Ugh, sorry,” I said, scrubbing at my eyes with the backs of my hands. “It’s been a long day.”

“I would hope so. I don’t know if I want ya in my truck too much longer if vehicle fires are a regular thing for ya. But we’re comin’ up on your place anyway.” He nodded toward a blurry collection of outbuildings just beyond the windshield.

I blinked rapidly to get my contact lenses back into place so I could see. And when I could finally focus, I wished for semiblindness again. At this point, I knew better than to expect a cute little apartment building, but I wasn’t even looking at a building. I was in a trailer court. Surrounded by trees, with no grass to speak of, the park was lined with old silver Airstream trailers. They were neatly kept but showed their age, their dull, battered metal glinting in the sun. There were no flowers or potted plants or plastic flamingos in the yards. Was there some sort of homeowners association that forbade that sort of thing, in order to protect the residents from the horrors of pink plastic birds?

The sign to the right of the entrance read FERNWOOD ESTATES. I snorted. Why do trailer courts always have such lofty names? I wondered grudgingly. It was always something like Rolling Acres or Peachtree Trail. It seemed a little pretentious. Then again, Kelsey’s apartment complex in Frankfort was called Quail Cove, and I’d never seen a quail there. Or a cove.

This was what I got for searching for an apartment online. I should have known something was off when the ad didn’t include pictures. The wording of the post was awfully vague: “Efficiency, one-bedroom with eat-in kitchen. Scenic views. Reasonable rates.” The ad never stated that it was an apartment, but it certainly never stated that it wasn’t.

I cleared my throat. “Nothing in the ad said anything about a trailer park.”

Will smirked as he parked in front of Lot 45. “Would you like me to drop you at the Mud Creek Four Seasons?”

I rolled my eyes. “You know, sarcasm is the lowest form of humor.”

“Well, it’s a hell of a lot funnier than interpretive dance.” Will cackled. “And by the way, it’s wit.”

“What?”

“The quote. It’s ‘sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.’ It’s from Oscar Wilde,” he informed me.

My eyebrows lifted.

“Yeah, we managed to study literature at Mud Creek High School. Between the animal husbandry and weldin’ classes, of course. And for the record, sarcasm isn’t the lowest form of wit. Armpit fart noises. That’s the lowest form of wit.”

I stared at him for a long, silent moment.

“I’m allowed to have layers,” he said defensively.

Chuckling, I shoved the truck door open. And I wouldn’t be cowed by the idea of living in a trailer. My reaction wasn’t a matter of middle-class snobbery. Point of fact, my parents’ first married home was a pink-and-white rental trailer with purple gingham curtains, where they lived while waiting for base housing to open up. One of the few fun stories my mom shared with me when I was a kid was about my dad taking a shower at the trailer one morning and screaming for help. The shower nozzle had risen farther and farther away from his head, and for a panicked moment, he thought he was shrinking. It turned out the wood underneath the shower was rotting and the unit was sinking. After Mama stopped laughing at him, she helped him up and called their landlord.

Will handed me the keys and I unlocked the door. These days they made “mobile homes” so nice you couldn’t really tell they were anything but cute little ranch-style houses. But this was a classic Airstream Bambi. Everything was so close I could practically touch it from the front door.

My landlady, Mrs. Smallwood—or at least, someone who worked for her—had made a lot of effort to make the trailer homey. Handmade petit point pillows with homespun idioms like “Stitch ’n Bitch” and “Martha Stewart doesn’t live here” decorated the blue corduroy foldout couch. A pretty blue glass pitcher rested on the kitchen counter, pinning down the renter’s agreement and the rules of the trailer court. And on the trundle bed, situated ten feet from the door, was an enormous fluffy comforter with a roaring University of Kentucky Wildcat in the middle of it.

I could stand in my kitchen and touch both walls with my palms. Still, it was meticulously clean and smelled like freshly sprayed Febreze. It felt a little like living in a metal tree house. Too high off the ground and too small, but sort of cozy and like you were living somewhere out of the ordinary.

“Not what you’re used to, huh?” Will asked, hauling my stuff up to the front stoop.

“It will be an adventure,” I told him. “Like the Swiss Family Robinson . . . only instead of a tree house, I’ll be encapsulated in a little metal tube.”

He chuckled. “Are ya sure you don’t want to come out with me for that chicken-fried steak? I might even be willin’ to throw in a piece of pie.”

“I appreciate it, but I’ll have to take a rain check. Thank you for the ride, and the keys.” I tugged them from his hands.

“You’ll regret it,” he called. “Junie—the cook at the Dinner Bell—never makes the same pie of the day twice.”

“I’ll just have to learn to live with it. To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development,” I told him. When he gave me a blank look, I added, “It’s another Oscar Wilde quote. I studied him, too.”

He clutched at his considerable chest. “Smart and pretty, a double threat.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” I assured him. “Thank you for all of your help today.”

“Well, what sort of mayor would I be if I just left flamin’ cars on the side of the highway? You’ll check in with me if ya have any problems at the hall?”

“Definitely,” I told him. “I’ll be in touch.”

He grinned cheekily. “A guy can dream.”

“Do you always have to have the last word?” I called after him. “Is this a thing with you?”

He smiled as he backed out of the trailer door. I thought he was going to shut it behind him, when he suddenly stuck his head back through the frame and said, “No.” Then he slammed it behind him.

I hadn’t even begun to unpack when the knocks on my trailer door started. My neighbors had turned out in droves to welcome the “new girl” to the neighborhood. Lula, a sweet-faced woman with eye shadow the color of radioactive plums, presented me with a homemade chicken potpie she’d frozen for a rainy “I don’t feel like cooking” day. Another, Ina Jane, gave me a casserole that consisted of tater tots, cream of mushroom soup, and cut-up hot dogs. And the third, Rosalee, sheepishly presented me with a five-pack of Bud Light from her fridge.

“Sorry, I didn’t know you were comin’,” she said. “Ina’s just really good at throwin’ casseroles together last-minute.”

“Velveeta and ‘cream of’ soups work kitchen miracles,” Ina said with a wink.

On a better day, I would have invited them all to sit down and share my Bud Light. But I was hot and tired and still smelled like burned tires. I was not in a hostess frame of mind. After asking just a few slightly invasive questions, the ladies excused themselves from my “living room” and assured me we’d all get to know each other better when I wasn’t so “torn up.”

I would ponder exactly how insulted I should be over being called “torn up” at another time.

Sipping a beer, I checked what clothes I had left for smoke damage. Most of my wardrobe consisted of sundresses that Kelsey had forced on me or T-shirts I’d bought at thrift stores. My shoes were old rain boots or Keds. When combined with my (completely necessary and prescribed) black-rimmed glasses, Kelsey called it my “nerd goddess” look. She would know—she was their secret queen.

I used my tiny shower stall to triple-wash my hair. I set up my laptop and my mobile wireless hotspot. I unpacked my toiletries. I did everything I could to make the trailer slightly more homey than the average motel room before collapsing onto the mattress.

My last thought before drifting off to sleep was that I hadn’t eaten anything since those diner waffles early in the morning. But since I wasn’t in the mood for frozen potpie or hot-dog bake, I decided against getting up to cook something for myself in my almost-an-Easy-Bake oven. I’d had enough fires for one day.

4

In Which I Solve the Problems of the World with WD-40

I rolled out of bed and flopped face-first onto the floor.

“Ow.”

Sadly, this was a pretty normal occurrence for me the first few mornings in a new location. I never could remember how much rolling room I had from one bed to the next, so I always overestimated or forgot which side to exit on.

I lifted my face from the nubby beige carpeting and groaned. Every muscle in my body felt like an overstretched rubber band. On top of that, I hadn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours. My stomach was so empty it was practically rubbing against my spine.

I pushed up from the floor and stumbled into the dollhouse-size bathroom to turn on the stall shower. The previous night I’d learned a lot about this tiny island of bathing efficiency. The good news was that the lack of extensive plumbing meant the water heated up quickly. The bad news was that the water heater was so small that the hot water ran out just as quickly, which meant I couldn’t linger under the water to put off whatever I had to accomplish that day.

Despite Sadie’s assertions that the mindless masses fell under my “princess spell” almost instantly, meeting new people always made me nervous. So I tried too hard to win people over right out of the gate. I overcompensated for my nervousness by being even more upbeat and chipper, which seemed to either charm people or make them dislike me with all of their cynical might. So I dialed up the cheerfulness even more to win them over—it was a vicious cycle. So far, my integration into Mud Creek society had been colored by shock and car fires. How would it change when my old patterns started to pop up?

I talked a sunny-side-up game, but I didn’t quite walk the walk. Part of me wanted so badly to believe that people were inherently good and decent and that things would always work out for the best. But my realistic side knew it didn’t always work out that way. Even so, I’d had unrelenting optimism beaten into my central nervous system from birth. There were times when not trying to find the silver lining of a situation left me feeling nauseated and a little dizzy.

My dad was a frustrated army lieutenant whose career had never quite reached the heights he’d expected. He had accepted any transfer that came his way, sure that the next base would be his big break, where the military would finally recognize his leadership potential and promote him all the way to his first star. I attended seven schools in twelve years. There were times when I would come home from the bus stop to find my mother in full-on packing mode, with this insistent, manic smile on her face, declaring that this was going to be the last move, this time was going to be different. Daddy would finally find people he could work with. Mama would finally find a group of officers’ wives who appreciated her. I would finally make some friends at school.

And somehow, we always ended up moving again. But if I pointed this out to Mama, groundings and the silent treatment ensued. My parents simply rolled right over any concerns or protests I had, just like they did with everyone else. No one knew better than they did. No one had your best interests at heart like they did. So going along with this volcanic flow of delusional optimism became an act of self-preservation. By the time we moved to Fort Campbell during my senior year, I didn’t make a peep. My father finally retired from the military right after I got my bachelor’s degree, and my parents settled down in Russellville, where their personalities guaranteed that they joined and left at least two churches a year.

My parents just didn’t mix well with others. They didn’t understand why the people around them didn’t appreciate their advice, their guidance, their brilliance. And they definitely didn’t understand how I could be happy in a job where there was no opportunity for advancement, not even a decent, upwardly mobile salary.

After getting my master’s degree in history and a specialty degree in folk studies from Western Kentucky University, I had bounced around different museums across the state. I’d gotten myself into a little bit of trouble by suggesting improvements to the displays and exhibits, which I could only blame on a genetic tendency to offer unsolicited advice. I aggravated the director of the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace Museum so much that she sent me away on the mobile exhibit for the summer, traveling from city to city with a semi truck full of second-tier Lincoln artifacts.

At the time, I preferred the mobile lifestyle. Too much time in one place made me twitchy. So I wrote a proposal and was given an annually reviewed position through the Kentucky Commission on Tourism. I’d held down the same job for three years, a personal record. And I’d made real friends, who were able to get to know the real me. After Kelsey had a long sit-down talk with me, subtitled “You Seem Like a Really Nice Girl, But If You Don’t Stop Pushing Splenda on My Coffee Breaks, I’m Going to Snap You Like a Twig,” we developed a system of signals for my various levels of annoyingness, the most severe of which was Kelsey miming snapping a twig. For the record, Kelsey was an incredibly intimidating mime.

I sighed. Picturing Kelsey in mime gear meant it was time to get some coffee in me.

I slipped into jeans and a blue Morrissey T-shirt I’d nicked from a wannabe travel writer obsessed with manga, grabbed my bags, and stepped outside . . . and suddenly remembered I didn’t have a car. I’d put off dealing with this the previous night, focusing on mundane details I could control instead of the mountain of things I couldn’t.

I plopped down on the concrete steps. I didn’t know what to do. Fred said there wasn’t a rental company in town. I didn’t know anyone in town. I didn’t want to introduce myself to my new neighbors in the park by bumming a ride.

I chewed my bottom lip, staring out at the dozen or so trailers that comprised Fernwood. It did look rather pretty, surrounded by fluttering green birch branches, with the early-morning light reflecting off the curving metal of the trailers. I was surprised at the quiet, even for seven o’clock on a Saturday in June. There were plenty of bikes and toys lying around the units, but no kids playing yet. No grown-ups getting up to drag themselves to work or on errands. Was Mud Creek the sort of place where families watched Saturday morning cartoons together over cereal? Part of me hoped so. Lucky Charms and Smurfs were tied to some of my favorite childhood memories.

I sighed again and kicked a rock with the toe of my shoe. Unreliable transportation. Disappointing housing. Backwoods traveler’s jet lag. Just a few of the many reasons I was getting a little tired of living on the move. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy seeing different parts of the state and speaking to students. Heck, contact with students was one of the best parts of my job. But I was getting to the point in my life where I wanted permanence. I wanted a home of my own, not just space carved out in a friend’s apartment. I wanted to be able to start a real relationship with someone without warning my boyfriend that he wouldn’t be seeing me very often because of my hectic schedule. I wanted to live like a grown-up.

But these things would require a promotion. At this point, I was barely making enough to fund my transient, makeshift lifestyle. I’d asked Sadie about a promotion to a full-time in-office position on a few occasions, but so far she and her boss, marketing director Ray Brackett, hadn’t been able to find the funding in our ever-shrinking state-sponsored budget . . . or maybe my work just hadn’t impressed her enough. I wasn’t sure. Sadie had Ray’s ear, so to speak. He trusted her judgment implicitly. Conversely, if she decided I was a liability, I would be ejected from the office faster than you could say, “seeking other opportunities.” If Sadie decided that I was ready for a full-time position, he would offer it. I just had to convince her that it was the right time.

I heard the crunch of tires over gravel and turned to see a battered yellow-and-Bondo-colored VW Beetle pulling through the trailer park entrance. And Joe Bob, waving vigorously from behind the wheel. He grinned madly as he pulled to a stop in front of my stoop, his eyes nearly disappearing in the deep creases in his face.

“Hey, Miss Bonnie!” he called.

“Hey, Joe Bob,” I said, in a softer tone, trying to keep my sleeping neighbors in mind. “How are you this morning?”

“Well, ma’am, Fred and I didn’t feel right about you bein’ left without any kind of car, so I thought I would bring this by for ya,” he said, gesturing to the Bug.

My mouth dropped open. “I can’t let you give me a car. That’s too much!”

“I’m not really givin’ ya a car, Miss Bonnie. It’s just something I put together usin’ spare parts from the scrap yard. Sort of an experiment, just to see if I could get it to run. I’m not usin’ it right now. And you need a car, so here ya go. It’s registered and insured, I promise. Fred made me. Otherwise, he woulda kept takin’ the spark plugs out when I wasn’t lookin’.”

Joe Bob’s round face held such an earnest expression, an almost childlike glee at being able to share something with me. How could I say no to that face? “Joe Bob, this is so nice of you. Really, it is.”

“Least I can do for ya when you’re gonna polish up the old McBride place. I hate that it’s all broken down. They used to make the best cheeseburgers in Mud Creek. You’d go to a concert and there’d be a line at the grill stretching all along the back wall. And it would stay that way all night. Don’t know if you could tell, lookin’ at me, but I love a good cheeseburger.” He rubbed his enormous belly and winked at me. “Don’t suppose you’re goin’ to open the grill up again, are ya?”

“No, I’m not really polishing up the building. I’m just saving some of the things inside. Posters, instruments, costumes, that sort of thing. I’ll clean them and send them to museums all around the state so they can display them.”

“Eh,” he grunted. “You can’t win ’em all. Now, are ya gonna take the car or not?”

“Only for a few days, and I’ll pay you fifty dollars a day for a rental fee.”

“Aw, no, I couldn’t take money for that, Miss Bonnie.”

“Just to cover the wear and tear on the car,” I insisted.

“Twenty-five,” he said, shaking his head.

“Thirty,” I responded, leveling him with stern eyes.

He pouted. “You’re makin’ a serious face, so I should just say yes. You win.” He reached out and shook my hand.

“Yay! I love to win.” I jumped up and down, clapping my hands. “Can I give you a lift into town?”

The FrankenBug ran surprisingly well, and Joe Bob was even chattier when he wasn’t the one driving, pointing out the grocery, the “good” gas station, and the local clinic as we bounced along the highway into town. I dropped him off at the towing station, along with my first “rental” payment. I was in a considerably better mood as I retraced my steps to the music hall.

I’d only managed to get about five miles out of the town proper when I heard a siren blaring behind me. I looked into the rearview mirror and saw a police car with lights flashing. I checked my speedometer, frowning when I saw that I was exactly two miles under the speed limit. And then I remembered that I didn’t know where the insurance and registration paperwork were located.

“Clearly, I am not meant to drive on this particular assignment,” I said with a sigh, pulling the FrankenBug over to the shoulder.

The squad car parked behind me, and a shapely blond lady stepped out. If I hadn’t noticed that she was carrying an actual firearm at her side, I would have sworn that this woman was just an extraordinarily well-dressed stripper. She had long legs and a tiny waist that somehow made even the brown polyester uniform pants look good. Her skin was peaches-and-cream and was combined with warm brown eyes and a naturally pink pout.

If not for the whole “armed officer of the law” thing, I would have hated her on behalf of less-hot women everywhere.

I rolled down my window and called out, “Ma’am, I don’t think I was speeding.”

The lady deputy chuckled, grinning widely under her mirrored aviators. “Oh, no, hon, I recognized the car. Joe Bob said he was going to lend it to you. I just wanted to say hi! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

I arched an eyebrow. “You used lights and sirens just to say hi?”

“Well, in a town like this, a girl’s got to make her own fun.”

I giggled and extended my hand out the window. “Bonnie Turkle.”

She shook it with a firm, tight grip. “Sheriff Jenny Lee Felter. I hear that you’re going to be sorting through the chaos over at the music hall. I just wanted to say, I’m glad you’re here. You should find some really interesting stuff in there.”

“I hope so. I’m starting on it this morning,” I said, hoping that would be a polite hint that I would like to move along and not be seen being questioned by the sheriff on the side of the road as Mud Creek residents drove past on their way into town.

“Oh, sure, sure,” she said, slipping a business card into my hand. “Here’s my card. If you ever run into trouble out there, just give me a call. Or if you just want to go out for a beer. It can get kind of lonely around here if you haven’t known everybody in town since birth. And it would be nice to visit with someone who’s been in the outside world lately. Will says you’re good people. That’s enough for me. ”

“Remind me to thank Mayor McBride for his endorsement.”

Jenny Lee snickered, sliding her sunglasses up her nose. “Well, he doesn’t give it to everybody, just the pretty ones.”

She patted the top of the FrankenBug, which I assumed was my signal to drive away. I honked lightly as I pulled off the shoulder and onto the road.

It was nice of Will to try to lay groundwork for me with people around town, to make my transition easier. But I couldn’t help wondering what he’d been saying, and to whom he’d been saying it.

The gravel of the McBride’s parking lot crunched under my tires as I slid to a stop in front of the building.

This was going to be a good day, I promised myself. I loved my job. I loved helping people learn about the state in which they lived. I loved making history come alive for kids, that moment when they actually lost interest in their handheld video games and started connecting with the exhibits around them. And frankly, I had to start somewhere. Getting a better idea of what I faced on the inside of the music hall seemed like the best way to begin my day.

I scanned the wasted powder-gray lot. I remembered some tidbit I’d read in an oral history about McBride’s. George McBride tried to run a clean place out of respect for his strictly religious wife. The music hall didn’t actually sell liquor. He built a hamburger-and-hot-dog counter just inside the door, but the only drinks it sold were sodas. There were two stalls in the parking lot; one sold fruit and the other sold whiskey. Customers would bring the whiskey into the club with them and add it to their sodas. George didn’t like it, but he didn’t “see” it because he didn’t want to lose customers. As long as they didn’t cause trouble, he didn’t kick them out.

And when locals protested that George was encouraging delinquency in young people and (gasp) race mixing by allowing interracial dancing, George practiced diplomacy. He sponsored a Little League team. He joined the Chamber of Commerce and raised money for the March of Dimes. He became a beloved local institution. George McBride had left a legacy worth preserving.

I slipped the key into the lock, holding my breath at the prospect of getting my hands dirty, historically speaking. What might I uncover beneath all those years of neglect? An original program? Elvis’s autograph? One turn of the key, and I’d find out.

It stuck.

The stupid lock was stuck. It hadn’t been used in such a long time that it had frozen up. And if I pushed the key too hard, it would snap off. Grunting, I yanked the key back out of the door and went to search Joe Bob’s trunk for a can of WD-40. Every problem in life can be fixed with either duct tape or a can of WD-40.

It took half the can and a good amount of sweet-talking, but I finally got the dead bolt moving. When the door finally popped, it felt like releasing the pressure on a particularly dusty can of soda, a loud sucking noise followed by an explosive fit of coughing from me. As I stepped into the building, early-morning sunlight filtered in through the door behind me, making those dust motes dance and glimmer.

I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the difference in light. Getting the electricity up and running would be job one. Besides my desire to avoid tripping over any stationary object within a mile radius, I was going to need power for my computer. Also, air-conditioning would be nice as July approached. I waved my hand in front of my face and tried to remember where in my kit I’d put the dust masks. Dropping my plastic fishing tackle box full of supplies on the floor, I dug out a mask and shimmied into an oversize denim work shirt to protect my clothes.

I spun around, taking in the intact tables and chairs, the scuffed dance floor, the balcony that would have been teeming with teenagers once upon a time. I didn’t know where to start, like an extremely geeky kid on Christmas morning.

A picture of Louis Gray playing on the McBride’s stage hung on the wall near the bar. Most of the posters were fraying at the edges but could be saved and framed. There were a handful of framed photos, but all except one were oxidized and fading. I stepped closer to the still-crisp black-and-white eight-by-ten on the wall. Louis Gray sat plucking his guitar, his shoulders slumped. Gray scored an immortal hit song with “Lurlene, Lurlene,” a sad ode to lost love and a woman who didn’t have courage or faith in her man. Before Taylor Swift and Adele cornered the breakup-anthem market, many a heart wallowed in the song’s lush, sorrowful notes. Even today, manly men would admit they’d cried into their beers to that song over lost girlfriends and love that would never be.

“Lurlene, Lurlene” was Louis’s first big hit. More than that, Louis’s guitar skills, which had previously been mediocre, suddenly improved as that song was recorded. The rumor was that he had sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads in exchange for a guitar that would only play good songs. He went on to record a handful of number-one hits before he died in a tour bus accident. Between the crossroads stories and the lost-love angle, there was a wealth of tales about his ghost wandering the abandoned highway, searching for his Lurlene. He looked so heartsick in this photo, so broken and sad, that despite his distance from the camera I could practically see the tears coursing down his cheeks.

The few extant photos of Gray were well-known images seen frequently in magazines and on posters in college dorm rooms. I’d never seen this photo anywhere. Maybe it had been taken by a local? If I could track down the photographer, we could work out a deal for the image rights and use it in promotional materials.

The day was looking up already!

Grinning, I skipped forward onto the stage, surveying the room. I imagined all of the music legends that had stood in this very spot when they were still new to the music business, when they were still unsure of themselves. I wasn’t even one of those people who worshipped music like it was lifeblood, and the sheer melodic mojo of this spot still gave me goose pimples. I could imagine the people packed between these walls, keyed up, wearing their best clothes and their dancing shoes.

Rock and roll, the blues, country and western—those were the first forms of truly American music, not something that we’d picked up from somewhere else and stylized for our tastes. You had to respect that.

I couldn’t write the Great American Novel. I’d never wanted to sing or dance. Hell, doing presentations for adults intimidated me so badly, I considered taking Xanax during my first few months on the job. But I could tell stories. I could make the history of this place come alive.

I took a step back for a better view and felt the board under my foot snap like a stalk of celery. I shrieked as my foot dropped through the broken space. For a horrible moment, it felt like my ankle had cracked right along with the boards. But it was just the impact of the splintered wood scraping against my skin. I hissed in pain as I drew my foot out. It was covered in blood and dust and who knew what else. I hobbled over to my bag and retrieved my first-aid kit to clean and dress it.

Okay, so cleaning and looking for weak spots in the floor would be task one.

Disinfected and bandaged, I hobbled around the room, taking notes and marking spots that merited careful investigation—the dressing rooms, the prep area behind the stage, Mr. McBride’s office. A good portion of the wood in the room was dry-rotted. The floor desperately needed replacing. And there were way more birds’ nests than one would prefer in a ballroom.

But in my head, I was already organizing the space into displays, moving and removing exhibits as I tried to decide between arranging the information by date or by musical genre. It was too bad this place wasn’t going to be a museum. It would have made a fantastic space for active, engaged learning. But I would just have to be grateful that the McBrides were letting me inside to salvage what I could. It was sad that the building would be torn down, but there was always a bright side.

I tried not to touch anything—I wasn’t quite ready to start preserving artifacts, which required a much larger kit involving the proper gloves and acid-free storage. Leaving them where they were was better than exposing precious old papers to the oils on my hands or changes in moisture levels.

After finishing my catalogue of the room, I turned toward the “dessert” portion of my tour. I’d been saving the dressing rooms for last. Split by gender on either side of the hall, they were located in a small wooden shack that George had tacked onto the Quonset hut in the interest of saving interior space for the venue. I pushed open the heavy oak door marked LADIES and found a glorified closet dimly lit by a frosted glass window. George had tried to do right by the ladies, putting up one of those large square makeup mirrors surrounded by round highlighting bulbs. An old pink country-and-western shirt hung in the corner, its red embroidery and silver spangles still bright. A pair of shimmery pale gray tights hung wrinkled and forlorn over the dressing bar. Someone had left a bright red lipstick behind, and a large powder puff. I could almost smell the oversweet floral perfume lingering on its fluffy pink fibers.

I wished I could save it, just like this. I would keep the room exactly as it was, as if some female performer had just dashed away from the makeup table to the stage, leaving her lipstick and a cloud of perfume in her wake. People would be able to approach the dressing room, but not walk all the way in. They would get to see the room as it was.

I stayed in the music hall until it became too dark to work. I made lists of calls I needed to make, of materials I would need. I planned out the restoring, framing, and building display supports for the artifacts in a timeline that—if all went according to plan—would get me out of here by early August, just in time for the school tours to begin. And, because I was on a roll, I took out some brown craft paper, spread it across the floor, and wrote a twelve-foot-wide to-do list.

But it wasn’t a regular, goal-oriented to-do list. It was what I wanted to accomplish with the exhibits, ideas I wanted to express, feelings I wanted to inspire. A feeling of connection to the period, as if visitors had stepped back into the heyday of McBride’s. A feeling of connection with the artists whose artifacts and music they come into contact with. A need to explore the music of this region on their own. A desire to play their own music. For locals, pride in their community for playing host to a hotspot of musical destiny.

I rolled the list across the floor and completed my usual prerestoration project ritual: talking to the space. “Okay,” I said to the building. “This is my wish list for you. As you can see, I only want what’s best for you. And I’m approaching this with the utmost respect for you. So, if you would help the process along for me, I would really appreciate it . . . I’ll see you in the morning.”

5

In Which I Survive the Library Apocalypse

I came home to my trailer, bags of groceries in hand, to find His Honor the mayor sitting on my front stoop, drinking what looked to be my “welcome to the neighborhood” beer . . . since my front door seemed to be propped open behind him.

“Didn’t your mother ever teach you it’s rude to let yourself into other people’s homes and drink their alcohol?”

Will’s smile tilted as he peered at me over those darned sunglasses. “Well, I seem to recall a story about bears and porridge, but Mama never brought up alcohol in particular.”

“You didn’t eat all my porridge and sleep in my bed, did you?” I asked, eyeing my open door.

“I’ve never been much on porridge,” he told me, shaking his head. “I did, however, bring ya some of my mama’s chicken-and-rice casserole, which I put in your fridge.”

“How did you get inside my trailer, again?”

“Ya didn’t lock your door all the way. The bolt only slid halfway home. You’ll get used to it after a few days. But as it was, anybody with a decent set of tools could just jimmy it open. Fortunately for you, this is a small town full of nice people.”

When I raised my eyebrows, he added, “Okay, that came out creepier than it sounded in my head. But, honestly, ya didn’t want that casserole sitting out in the sun all afternoon. That would be a waste!”

“I don’t know how to feel about the breaking and entering . . . plus that unresolved ‘sleeping in my bed’ question, which I noticed you didn’t answer,” I told him as he took my grocery bags from me and hauled them inside.

“Would my mama’s special secret-recipe pecan pie help ya feel better?” he asked, nodding toward the foil-wrapped disk on my tiny counter. “She doesn’t make that for just anybody, ya know.”

“A little better,” I conceded, leaning against the counter. Will was barely able to wedge himself into the kitchen, looming over me with an amused quirk to his lips. “So what brings you here, besides minor felonies and homemade pie?”

“Just wanted to check in with our newest citizen,” he said nonchalantly.

“Is this a service the mayor’s office provides to all new residents of Mud Creek?”

He shook his head. “Only the pretty ones.”

I chuckled as he leaned just a fraction closer. “Oh, you would be dangerous if you were half as charming as you think you are.”

He scoffed. “I am just as charmin’ as I think I am.”

He bent his head and had almost kissed my mouth when I panicked and suddenly moved my head forward. His kiss landed on the tip of my nose, making him laugh. I groaned and dropped my head, thunking it against his collarbone. He took this as an opportunity to wind a lock of my hair around his fingers and tug gently. “Okay, maybe I’m moving a little fast, here. Let’s start over.”

He backed away, handing me a beer from the fridge. “How was your day, dear?”

“It was good,” I said, as he cut me a wedge of pie and plated it on a dish I didn’t even know I had. He slid the plate onto the little kitchenette table and then cut another piece for himself. He sat at the tiny table with me, the scene very cozy and domestic, if a bit cramped. “I spent some time at the music hall.”

Will frowned, pushing his pie away with sudden disinterest.

“What?” I asked. “Why do you make that face whenever I talk about the music hall?”

He shrugged. “I watched my dad throw away night after night there. He worked himself to death, bussin’ tables, washin’ glasses, liftin’ cases. And when he wasn’t at the music hall, he was thinkin’ about the music hall. We never had time with him. I never had the things that other kids had, because Dad sank every extra dime into that place. We were McBrides, and that means something in this town. But to me, it meant rarely havin’ dinner with the whole family in one place. It meant havin’ only one person there on parent-teacher night. He was so sentimental about a stupid buildin’. He should have shut it down a long time before, but he didn’t want to admit it was beyond savin’. He didn’t want to be the one to drop the family legacy.”

“And he was doing that for you.”

He frowned. “He was doin’ it for him. I never asked for it.”

“Well, something good has to come out of it, right?” I insisted. “The property, if not the building, is going to provide the jobs the town needs to survive. What about your negotiations with ComfyCheeks? Any new developments?”

“More of the same,” he said, picking at his pie. “Goin’ round and round preliminary information, makin’ sure all of the ducks are in a row before anybody admits what they really want to do. But give me a few more weeks and I think we’ll be ready to make an announcement.”

“That’s great!” I exclaimed.

“It’s a start,” he hedged, though I could see the pleased smile curving his mouth. “So, tell me about your plans for the stuff at the music hall.”

“Well, step one is learning how to lock my own front door.”

I’d been putting off my first visit to the Mud Creek Public Library as a sort of weekend treat. I wasn’t much of a churchgoer, so Sunday morning seemed like the perfect time for my visit. I couldn’t find the operating hours online, because, much like the Mud Creek city Web site, the library’s homepage consisted of a stick figure wearing a hard hat and holding an “under construction” sign. Kelsey informed me that her beloved pack of programming experts-slash-social misfits researched the page and it had looked that way since 2002. But I took a chance that the building was open on a Sunday, timing my visit so that most of my neighbors would be sitting in pews while I searched through the special collections room. Sunday-morning crowds were far more likely to stop for lunch on the way home from services than to bother with the library.

The library building must have been a wonder when it was built. It was in the classical revival style, involving a lot of pale marble and tall columns. I could see that there was a landmark cornerstone near the entrance, but the gray-veined stone was so eroded I could barely make out the date of completion, 1923. Now, the paint on the white columns dominating the facade was peeling like birch bark and falling to the ground in strips. The windows were dirty, if not cracked. And the l was missing from Public on the entrance sign. I noticed as I walked through the entrance that the wooden sign actually hung over the building’s facade like a loose tooth. Just behind it, I could see a motto etched in the marble: Let there be light.

Somewhere in the back of my brain, I knew that should mean something to me beyond God’s first known line of dialogue. But I couldn’t make the connection. It would come to me, I promised myself . . . or it would keep me awake at night, making crazy Venn diagrams until I collapsed in a frustrated heap.

You know those movies where the hero wakes up from a coma and wanders down a trashed, corpse-ridden hospital hallway and realizes, “Oh crap, I slept through the zombie apocalypse”? Well, at least there were no corpses in sight in the Mud Creek Public Library. But this place was trashed. The carpet was filthy and patched over with duct tape in places. Books stacked on the circulation desk seemed to be surrounded by a thick layer of dust, so they’d clearly been there for a while. I didn’t see a single person, not one patron or staffer. The computers were at least ten years out of date. I knew better than to even ask about wireless access. The card catalogue was a filing cabinet filled with actual cards, which appealed to the history geek in me.

I scanned the titles on the shelves, impressed by the collection of leather-bound reference materials near the circulation desk. Those books, though slightly outdated, were well cared for and neatly organized. Unfortunately, the stairs to the special collections room were boarded over, which complicated things.

“Hello?” I called, unsure whether I really wanted someone to answer me. What if no one was here? What if I wasn’t supposed to be here? I mean, the lights were on and the door was unlocked, but from what I’d seen, that could have been an error on the staff’s part. I doubted Sadie would be amused if I got busted for breaking and entering a municipal building. Kelsey, sure, but Sadie, no. I turned on my heel, determined to make tracks out the front entrance and find some other way to get my local information, and nearly mowed down a trim little woman with thick steely-gray hair and skin like faded sepia parchment.

“Ack!” she shouted, throwing her hands over her face.

“Yipe!” I cried, clutching at the elderly woman’s arms so I wouldn’t knock her over completely. She glared up at me as I righted us and steadied her on her feet. “I’m so sorry!”

“Oh, that was a fright.” The lady clutched at her purple paisley blouse as if she could will her heart to slow down. “I think that should count as my cardio for the day. I don’t care what the doctor has to say about it.”

“I’m so sorry. You move really quietly!” I exclaimed, taking my hands from her arms only when I was sure she would stay upright.

“Years of practice.” She sniffed, straightening her church clothes. “Now, how can I help you?”

Miss Earlene McGlory, sister to the recently indisposed Mayor Tommy McGlory, had worked at the library for almost fifty years and was the first black woman to serve as Mud Creek’s head librarian. Her grasp of my job as a multimedia historian was impressive. I usually spent the first few hours at any location explaining what I did, because most people thought I just made the title up. But Miss Earlene, an avid devourer of library-science and historical journals, was eager to see all of my tricks and tools. I outlined my purpose in Mud Creek and what I might need from the library in terms of historical materials, promising her a tour of the building as soon as I felt it was safe. At the mention of McBride’s, her expression turned soft and a little misty for a moment, but she snapped out of it quickly, striding behind the circulation desk to tap away at the ancient computer.

“So you’re the one that has young McBride all stirred up, huh?” She chuckled, raising a pair of bifocals over the enormous black-rimmed glasses she was already wearing to peer down at the black-and-green computer screen.

“I wouldn’t say ‘stirred up,’” I objected.

“It’s a small town, honey. Word gets around quickly when our Will gets his head turned by a new girl. Especially when he’s wound up enough to talk to his mama about her. The town grapevine gets a-jangling.”

“His mama?”

She ignored my distressed squeak. “I can’t say anyone deserves it any more than him. Oh, that boy used to give me fits, hiding in the stacks with his little girlfriends for ‘study dates’ and doing who knows what.”

I frowned. “Of course he did.”

She snorted delicately. “Well, he grew up nice. You have to give him that.”

“I don’t have to give him anything,” I said, a bit more tartly.

“Good for you, honey,” she said, grinning at me and patting my hand. I had absolutely no clue what was so funny about my statement.

Miss Earlene had a wealth of news clippings for me to look over. And she saved me the awkwardness of having to go to the Mud Creek Ledger’s office to ask for access to their archives. A pipe had burst in the newspaper’s press room in 1984, prompting the publisher to move the archives to the library basement. The only things I couldn’t find were photos from the performances of the crowd. The newspaper generally used head shots provided by publicity offices when reporting on events at the music hall.

I showed Miss Earlene how my portable scanner worked, storing hi-res images on my computer and making PDF copies of all relevant newspaper clippings. I intentionally didn’t correct for any yellowing or damage, to preserve their authentic “vintage” appearance. Besides the fact that Miss Earlene wouldn’t have let me take the items from the library, I could not and would not damage original documents by mounting them.

While I worked, Miss Earlene pried the boards loose from the special collections room with an upper-body fortitude you wouldn’t expect of a woman approaching seventy. She flipped on the light inside what looked like a perfectly neat, functional special collections room. My jaw dropped as I stammered, “What— Why?”

“Had a couple of genealogy nuts come through town a few years back and try to clean me out. They thought I wouldn’t put up a fuss when they tried to just waltz out with the only copies of the high school’s yearbooks and property surveys from the year the county was founded. They had the gall to tell me that because the library was so old and the county was so broke, those ‘precious documents’ would be better off in the discerning hands of the descendants of the ‘founding fathers.’” She gave a gentle harrumph and took off her glasses to give them a thorough polishing. “Never mind that those so-called founding fathers only moved to town in the 1880s and then jumped ship at the first sign of drought a few years later.”

“And I take it that you brought their waltz to an abrupt end?”

“I may or may not have convinced them that their ancestors left town under suspicion of ‘livestock worrying,’” she said, throwing the boards aside as I burst out laughing. “After that, I put boards up on the room and only take them down for special cases.”

“Miss Earlene, I think you and I are going to be very good friends,” I called after her as she began searching the shelves.

Her shrunken little form came toddling back to the circulation desk, carrying a pile of books that reached her chin. She plopped them in a perfect stack beside my laptop. “Right back at you, girlie.”

6

In Which I Tangle with Marsupials, Both Living and Dead

No good day ever started with staring down a dead possum.

Thanks to some helpful utility workers, I got the electricity temporarily turned on at the music hall, making my job there much easier. I spent the first few days sifting through mountains of dust and debris. I kept little things, like buttons and guitar picks I found on the floor. Larger items were sealed in Tupperware until I could handle them properly.

I tried to develop a schedule. I worked in the music hall in the mornings, when the building was coolest. In the afternoons, I visited Miss Earlene at the library, looked through historical materials, and helped her organize some of the chaos—at least the shelves she couldn’t reach.

I ate most of my meals at the famed local diner. The Dinner Bell crowd was definitely blue-collar—work shirts, battered jeans, and baseball caps seemed to be the local uniform. This was a small-town diner, with classic car posters and sports schedules for the local high school teams on the walls. The owners also seemed to own a small fortune in antique soda signage. The brightly colored pressed tin advertisements they were using as decorations would fetch up to two hundred dollars each at an antique shop. Then again, if I mentioned it to the owners, they might think I was after something. It was better not to mention it. But it was nice to know that other people in Mud Creek valued older Americana. Maybe I could find a few kindred souls.

There were no garden omelets or turkey bacon available at the Dinner Bell. Everything on the breakfast menu involved sausage gravy. But the chicken-fried steak was just as delicious as Will had promised. We’d even enjoyed one together a time or two.

In fact, I was supposed to be joining him for lunch that very afternoon. But at the moment, I was staring in horror at a furry gray shape curled in the corner behind the music hall’s hamburger counter. I slipped on rubber gloves and was debating my disposal plan when I heard a shrill “Yoohoo!” from the glass-block entrance.

A petite, vaguely familiar-looking woman with light caramel-colored hair, wide blue eyes, and a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her pert nose stuck her head into the doorway. “Are you open to visitors—” Brows puckered, she came toward me. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, it’s just a dead possum. I don’t know how he found his way into the building. But I guess it’s better that I found him sooner than later.” I scooped it up, prepared to drop the carcass into an industrial trash bag for proper burial.

The woman arched an eyebrow as I lifted the stiff little body by the tail. “Honey, I wouldn’t do that if I were you. I would just leave it and hope it skedaddles away on its own.”

“Why?” I said, lifting the animal until it was level with my head.

Here’s the thing about possums: they’re basically just giant rats with bigger teeth and more attitude. And, suddenly, this supposedly dead possum was not happy to be held by the tail like some sort of furry tetherball, as it demonstrated by hissing and screeching and thrashing back and forth as it tried to take a bite out of me. I screamed, “Oh my God!”

And for some reason, I couldn’t seem to drop the little demon. I just held on, staring in horror as it snapped, sharp white fangs bared.

“Why are you still holding on to it?” the woman demanded.

“I don’t know!”

I dropped the squirming, spitting mass to the floor as gently as I could, and my visitor shooed it out with a broom. I ran to the sink to scrub my hands clean, even though I’d been wearing gloves. I didn’t want to catch some weird possum-related illness. Was there such a thing as possum pox? As our chattering guest departed, the woman slammed the door behind it, hopefully barring further invasions from pissed-off marsupials.

“Thank you,” I told her. “From now on, I will assume that any random animals I find in here are, in fact, living.”

“Probably a good idea,” she agreed. “Mean little things, possums, but not bad roasted with potatoes.”

I did my best not to make an “ew” face. I knew that many of the people I’d met in my travels were enthusiastic game eaters. They ate everything from deer chili to beer-basted wild boar. Sometimes it was out of necessity, because they couldn’t afford to buy meat from the grocery, and sometimes it was because they just enjoyed the challenge of eating what they caught. Either way, I didn’t appreciate it when people fed me something and then cackled “I bet you can’t tell that’s not beef!”

“I’ve heard it’s kind of greasy. And gamy,” I said, in what I hoped was a nonjudgmental tone.

“It is a little bit better in burgoo,” she said. “The other flavors mask the taste.”

“The stew stuff? I thought that was just for the Kentucky Derby.”

“Not really. Burgoo has always been more of a potluck party thing. When people didn’t have enough to feed their families—or when they were just plain bored—they got together and threw whatever they had in the pot—venison, chicken, raccoon, vegetables—and they made a stew out of it. There’s no official recipe. Corn, lima beans, carrots, onions, and whatever meat you can get together. Back when Will was a little boy, we used to do it as a sort of community feed for people who couldn’t afford to feed their families—that way, we didn’t put them on the spot. It’s harder to be depressed about poverty when you’re throwing a party.”

“So why did you stop throwing the parties?”

She shrugged. “My mother-in-law was the one who organized them. After she died, we seemed to fall out of the habit. I thought about starting it up again but then Jim took over the music hall and my hands were too full.”

Suddenly, I realized where I knew this woman from. And I felt like the dumbest person alive. She had Will’s eyes. Or rather, Will had her eyes. This sweet-faced woman in the peach-plaid shorts was Will’s mother, she of the delicious pecan pie.

And it seemed that she was here to power-hug me. “Well, now that the excitement is over, honey, I am so glad to meet you!” she cried, throwing her arms around me so hard that my neck cracked. “I’m Brenda, Will’s mama.”

“Um, thank you for the pie,” I said.

“Oh, it was the least I could do. You’re just adorable up close, aren’t you, sweetie? No wonder my Will’s been in such a dither.”

“I try,” I told her, turning toward the door as I heard yet another familiar voice yell, “Hello? Ma?”

It was Will. And he seemed to be carrying more possums.

There were two taxidermically preserved bodies in the cardboard box Will was toting. Their eyes were open and fixed, pale yellow glass. And their bodies were frozen in playful poses, as if they were dancing. Brenda grimaced. “I thought you could use them for your displays . . . The possum thing is just a coincidence, I promise.”

She pulled the two stuffed animals out of the box and put them on a nearby table. “This is Flotsam and Jetsam. George won them in a poker game a year or so after he opened the club and trained them to dance outside the door. People used to stop by just to see them hop around. And then, of course, they’d hear the music and they’d have to come in.”

“I had no idea you could train possums,” I said, thinking of the furious specimen we’d just evicted.

“Anything to bring people through the door,” Will muttered in unison with his mother, though her tone was more reminiscent and cheerful.

Brenda ignored her son’s grumpiness and laced her arm through mine, leading me around the room so she could see my progress in cleaning. “I can’t tell you how happy I am that someone is going to organize all this stuff and share it with people. I’ve been begging Will for years to come over and at least clean the place out. But he said it wasn’t our building anymore, so we should just leave it.” Will shifted from foot to foot, suddenly fascinated with the sunglasses hanging from his pocket. “I’m so happy it won’t be left to the bulldozer.”

“Happy to help.”

“Now, I have something for you, out in the car,” she said, looking to Will. “Hon, would you mind getting the plastic storage bin in my backseat?”

He frowned. “Why didn’t you just bring it in with you?”

“Are you going to argue with your mama or are you going to comply with my very simple request?” she asked, her voice going steely.

Will’s mouth popped open as if he was going to make some sort of remark, but with an increased measure of “mother’s stare” from Brenda, he clamped his lips shut and slapped his hat on his head.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a sigh, skulking out the door.

Brenda gave my cheek another gentle pinch.

“Mrs. McBride, I think you have the wrong idea about your son and me. We’re just friends.” I pulled at the collar of my T-shirt, which seemed to be sticking to my neck. Seriously, how long could it take Will to get a stupid box out of the car?

Brenda leveled her gaze at me and told me, “My son is a very sweet, very complicated, sometimes extremely stupid man. He’s a lot like his father.”

I worked to hold in my snicker. I really did.

“I loved my husband,” she said. “Thought the absolute world of him. But he was not a businessman. Will took on a lot of guilt, feeling like Jim was working hard to preserve a legacy for him. The two of them never did see eye to eye on this place, which is why it’s so difficult for Will to appreciate it, I think. Will was here with his daddy, trying to box things up, when Jim had his heart attack. Jim had been downright depressed about his decision to close and Will wanted Jim to snap out of it, move on, start looking for a real job, grow the hell up. Jim was about to argue right back, but the next thing Will knew, Jim was on his knees, clutching his chest.”

“Mr. McBride died here?” I whispered. No wonder Will was so reluctant to come into the building. He’d watched his father die here. A shard of guilt pricked at the edge of my conscience. I was surprised he had been willing to take me as far as the parking lot.

“Doesn’t it bother you to be here?” I asked her quietly.

“Oh, honey, not a bit. I mean, Jim lived on a steady diet of cheeseburgers and stress. And it only made sense that he passed on here. He lived his whole life here.”

“That is a very balanced and yet somehow unnerving way of looking at it,” I told her.

She shrugged. “I’ve gained perspective over the years.”

Just then, Will came struggling through the door with a large plastic storage bin. He scowled, dropping his burden at our feet, and backed toward the hamburger counter to inspect the polish I’d given the chrome. Brenda opened the lid to reveal carefully stacked film reels and sleeves of negatives and dozens of small framed photos. “My mother-in-law was a bit of a camera nut. She started right after George got home from the war. She only had one picture of him when he went away, and something about not being able to see his face every day for years on end . . . well, she wanted to make sure that if anything ever happened, she would have plenty of pictures of George. She took a few snapshots just about every day. I have enough slide carousels to start my own tiny amusement park. And when he opened the music hall, she took to recording almost every act that crossed the stage. She changed camera models as the technology got better. She even bought a Super 8 and took some movies. It’s all right here. And I’m going to give it to you.”

I wiped the historian drool from my chin. “W-why would you do that?”

“Because I think you would make the best use of them. And I like the idea of our family’s work being shared with the world.”

I could hear Will groan quietly behind us. Brenda rolled her eyes.

“So is she the one who took the photo of Louis Gray on the wall?” I asked.

“That was one of her best,” she said, smiling fondly. “He played here a few times before he hit it big. I have a copy hanging in my living room. The negative is in there somewhere. Feel free to use it.”

I threw my arms around her, squealing a little, which I would be embarrassed about at a later date. “This is exactly what I needed, Miss Brenda! Thank you so much.”

Brenda wiped at the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes as she released me. “Well, I’m going to go have a look around. Maybe try to find my initials. Jim carved ours around here somewhere.”

She wandered off, gently pushing chairs aside and inspecting the walls for the right carving. I noticed Will shifting from foot to foot, intentionally looking at the floor rather than searching the building for memories like his mother. I glanced down at the box and saw a maroon leather photo album. I bent to pick it up.

“No, no, don’t do that,” he said as I opened it to see a picture of Will and his dad behind the hamburger counter, wearing matching white paper hats. Will and his dad eating pie with a much younger Loretta Lynn. Will’s mother chasing a pair of possums while Will laughed hysterically. What looked like a baby Will sitting in James Brown’s lap.

I cried, “These are great!”

He groaned. “I only kept them to make my mom happy. She likes to think of the good times.”

“But these pictures are adorable,” I cooed. “Look at you, wiping lemon meringue pie filling on Loretta Lynn’s skirt.”

“She was not happy about that,” he said, shaking his head.

“Come on, you have to admit there were perks to growing up here. How many people can say that they sat on the laps of music legends?”

He sighed. “It’s like my life is divided into two sections. The part when I was a kid, and everything about the hall was excitin’ and I was meetin’ all of these fun people in sparkly clothes. And when my dad said everything was gonna be okay, I believed him. And then there’s another part, when I knew better. It’s less fun, less colorful now, but I know where I stand.”

“Maybe it’s not about knowing where you stand. Maybe it’s about remembering those good times without resenting what caused them.”

“You have a Hallmark greeting card speech for just about every situation, don’t you?” he muttered.

I nodded. “Except for ‘your husband dumped you for a lady lumberjack,’” I told him. “There are no words that will make that better.”

“You are . . . different, aren’t you?” he asked, staring at me. I shrugged. “Why are you so interested in this stuff? I mean, you don’t have any connection to the musicians. You don’t know anybody in Mud Creek. Why is this so important to you?”

“Those who don’t respect history are doomed to repeat it,” I told him.

“Well, that was clichéd and condescendin’.”

I sighed. “My parents, they edited history at will. No, it wasn’t my dad’s fault we had to move to a different post. It wasn’t because he’d alienated everybody he worked with. He just wanted a change of scenery. And Mom didn’t start a fight with my grandparents that ruined Thanksgiving. She just wasn’t feeling well, that’s all, and we had to leave early. Stories got edited to make them look better, and you looked like the selfish one. And they changed more every time they were told. If you tried to argue with my parents, they were just so insistent that that was the way it was, they were so resolute, that you felt like you were the crazy one for remembering it differently. I grew up unsure of a lot of things. So having facts and concrete proof of the past, it’s reassuring. It makes me happy to preserve that, to give that gift to other people. And I’ve always had a soft spot for country music, and rhythm and blues. Sure, it’s usually about pain and heartbreak, but at least it’s honest.”

“Yeah, but aren’t most perspectives on history skewed? I mean, dependin’ on who writes the story, that’s the point of view you’re gonna get, right?”

My jaw dropped. “Why would you say that?” I exclaimed.

“Because you’re awfully cute when you get mad.”

I glared at him. Clearly I wasn’t going about this in the right way. I needed to find some way for him to feel involved in the restoration without feeling threatened. Men like Will needed to feel useful. I glanced over his shoulder to see that his mother was still searching the walls. My gaze fell on the defunct jukebox in the corner. “While you’re here, can you give me a hand with this? I’m shipping it to a restorer tomorrow, but they asked me to have it strapped to the handcart when they pick it up. Something about liability.”

“Fine.” He sighed. “I can’t deal with ya when you’re lookin’ up at me with those freakishly large eyes. It’s like being sexually harassed by an anime character.”

“I’m wondering how much anime you’ve seen.”

“Where are your lift belts?”

“In the office.” I pointed toward the hamburger counter.

He went to rummage among my packing supplies while I gingerly pulled the jukebox away from the wall, bracing myself for any little shapes that could dart out between my feet at any moment. While I could scoot the heavy metal box across the smooth wooden floor, I wasn’t going to be able to lift it onto the rolling cart.

I peered down at the perfectly rectangular dust spot the jukebox had left behind. There were the expected dust bunnies, loose quarters going as far back as 1943, and an old tube of Maybelline lipstick that had long since turned to red chalk. I carefully shoved the ancient machine farther away from the wall and heard a brittle rustling noise. I froze, waiting for the mouse or rat or—God forbid—another possum to run out of the nest I’d just disturbed. But nothing came a-nipping at my ankles.

I reached under the machine and my fingers brushed against a thin sheaf of paper caught in its frame. I carefully drew the old lined notebook paper out, blowing the thick layer of dust away. I could just make out the faded blue ink chicken-scratched across the note.

Unfolding the bundle, I found that it was actually four pages. One was a carefully penned letter to “Louis” from “E.”

“Dear Louis, I know this is going to hurt you,” I read aloud. “I hate the idea that you’re going to show up tonight, expecting me to meet you, when I’m not going to be there. I can’t leave my mama, Louis. I just can’t. She’s too sick to take care of herself, much less my brother. If I leave, everything falls apart. I love you. I will always love you. But this just isn’t the right time. Maybe in a few years, if you still feel the same way about me, you’ll come back and we’ll find each other all over again. If not, I hope you find someone to love you the way you deserve, the way I love you. With all of my heart, E.”

I glanced up at the framed photo of Louis Gray on the wall. Could he be the Louis the letter was addressed to? Even if he wasn’t, this sort of Dear John letter would be an interesting artifact to display. I could do some sort of “Broken Hearts” exhibit to honor country music.

Wincing at the stress I was putting on the old paper, I pulled the next two pages away. The creases were soft with age, the fibers of the paper fanning out like little palm fronds. The block script was uneven and choppy, as if the author had used a wall or someone’s back as an improvised writing desk. The ink was smudged in places, where water had dropped onto the words and then dried. Was this an honest-to-goodness tearstained letter?

It would be wrong to call the Broken Hearts display “Tears in Their Beer,” wouldn’t it? I chewed my lip. Probably. McBride’s hadn’t even served beer.

These pages looked more like poetry, blocks of verse with words scribbled out and revised. “Missing you, lady, like the air I breathe,” I murmured, reading it aloud. “Missing you, lady, and I can’t believe, That you lost your love for me. That you lost your faith in me. You’re gone. You’re gone. My love—”

I looked up to see Will emerge from my office with some lift belts. “Why do you have that incredibly frightenin’ smile on your face?” he asked.

“This is a happy face.”

He chuckled. “That’s why it’s frightenin’. You look like a demented tooth fairy.”

“You’re afraid of the tooth fairy?”

“You have your issues, I have mine. What is that?” he asked, nodding toward the yellowed paper.

“You ever heard that song ‘Lurlene, Lurlene’?” I asked carefully.

He shrugged. “Who hasn’t?”

“Well, I am pretty sure that this is an early—if not original—draft of the lyrics.”

“What? That’s not possible,” Will scoffed as I gingerly placed the sheets in his hands.

“No, look, he’d crossed out ‘baby’ and written ‘lady.’ And then he wrote ‘baby’ again,” I said, unearthing a rectangular Tupperware box from my kit. I took the papers from him and tucked them inside.

“You’re puttin’ it in Tupperware?” he asked.

“Until I can figure out the best way to flatten it, smooth out the wrinkles, and store it in an acid-free sleeve,” I told him. “I’ll have to verify with my handwriting guy, but this could be a centerpiece exhibit. Museum directors from all around the country would line up for the chance to display it, even temporarily.”

“You have a handwritin’ guy?”

“Yeah, in Chicago. Who doesn’t?”

Will kissed my forehead. “Gosh, you’re cute.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “Look, this is like having the first few lines of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ scribbled on a cocktail napkin from Maggie’s Short Orders.” Will gave me a blank look. “The original name for Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken in Memphis?” More blankness. “We really need to get you outside the town limits every once in a while.

“Just think about it,” I continued, gesturing to the room. “Louis sat here, maybe at this very table, pining for his lost Lurlene. Imagine what sort of woman she had to be to catch his attention. And it hurt so much, he gave up and tossed the paper at the wall and it fell behind the jukebox.”

He clapped his hands over his face. “Oh my God, please save me from the rabid romantic goo in those big ol’ blue eyes of yours.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being exposed to actual human emotions beyond ‘I’m horny’ and ‘I want a sandwich.’”

“That’s not fair. I occasionally want a beer, too,” he told me.

I may or may not have clutched the Tupperware to my chest like a beloved teddy bear. “I can’t believe this was still under there after so many years.”

Will grimaced, looking around the room to places where I’d sorted various junk into “keep” and “trash” piles. “Well, Dad was never much of a housekeeper.”

7

In Which I Seek Shelter from the Storm

I sat in the FrankenBug, parked outside the Mud Creek post office, staring at the forms I had balanced against the steering wheel. I’d practically chewed a hole in my lip weighing the various consequences of signing this paperwork. That very morning, my handwriting guy had faxed me an “absolutely, positively yes,” to confirm that the lyrics matched known samples of Louis Gray’s handwriting. He’d turned his opinion over far more quickly than I’d anticipated. I thought I would have time to mull this decision over. But here I was, less than a week later, staring at the proposal forms that would nominate McBride’s Music Hall as a national historic landmark. I had a friend in the National Park Service who believed she could fast-track the review process through initial inquiry and submission steps, since the site was being considered for demolition.

Preventing said demolition would, to put it mildly, complicate Will’s plans to build a factory there. He would not be happy, nor would the dozens of people who hoped to get jobs at the factory. But I believed I was doing the right thing. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself every time my hand trembled its way out of signing the proposal form.

Simply put, McBride’s was too precious to bulldoze. Rock and roll, blues, country music—they were among America’s few completely original contributions to world culture. McBride’s provided a window into our musical heritage that was disappearing quickly under the rubble of iPods and YouTube music videos. The fact that Louis Gray had written one of the seminal blues songs inside its walls just gave me the right hook to convince the landmark review committee of my position. Tearing it down would be like finding the desk on which Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence and trashing it in favor of something you bought at IKEA.

It had to be protected, preserved for future generations to enjoy. I’d been right before; the music hall would make a perfect music museum. Almost everything I needed was already there. I just had to polish it up a bit (okay, a lot) and organize the debris into exhibits. And I already had the centerpiece artifact. Displaying the draft lyrics to “Lurlene, Lurlene” would make the McBride’s museum more than just a roadside attraction. It would become a mecca for music fans, like Elvis’s birthplace or Jim Morrison’s grave. People whose broken hearts had been mended by Louis Gray’s music would flock to the place where he’d felt the same pain and put it into words.

And I could help tell the story. I could do my part to protect that little piece of history. I couldn’t let an opportunity like this just slip through my fingers.

I took a deep breath, propped my hand against the steering wheel, and signed the proposal. I sealed it in the manila envelope, checked that I had the appropriate postage attached, and dropped it in the big blue mailbox.

No turning back now.

Three days later, I sat at my kitchenette table, unable to sleep, poring over lists and plans and Post-it “to dos” before I was ready to pitch my idea for a McBride’s museum to Sadie. Technically I didn’t need her approval to launch the idea and start recruiting sponsors, but to go around her would just be rude.

Besides, it wasn’t as if I could sleep. Here’s the thing about trying to sleep in a metal trailer—it amplifies every noise within a five-mile radius. And at the moment, the wind and rain were battering the sides of my trailer like an army of pissed-off tap dancers. I was living in a giant tin can phone strung up to the entire trailer park.

I tried to find the muffled noise “soothing.” But the thunder came closer and closer until it sounded like it was hammering my door down. Wait. That was my door. I bolted up from the table, batting at the Post-its stuck to my cheeks. Apparently, I’d fallen asleep.

And someone was beating on my door. Blinking and wiping at my eyes, I grabbed my trusty can of decoupage sealant and approached the rattling metal frame. I looked through the peephole and saw Will standing there in a bright yellow rain slicker marked MCVFD.

I yanked the door open and ever-so-subtly tried to move in front of my kitchenette table.

Evidence of a guilty conscience, a little voice singsonged in my head.

Shut up, singsong internal voice!

“Hi!” I said, just a little too loudly. “What are you doing here?”

Windblown and wet, Will looked down at my pajama pants and frowned. Well, if he wanted me to answer the door in something sexier than butterfly-patterned purple cotton pants, he should give me some warning.

“Hey!” he yelled over the howling rain. “Haven’t you been watchin’ the weather reports?”

“I don’t have a TV!”

Behind him, the wind beat the trees into submission, stripping away leaves as the limbs flailed around like temperamental toddlers. I stood, mesmerized by the inky black soup of clouds rolling overhead, lashing us both with sheets of rain. Shoving past me, Will picked up a pair of rain boots and a jacket I’d slung over my wall-mounted couch and threw them at me. “Put these on. Hurry!”

“What are you doing?” I yelled.

“Severe thunderstorms. Tornado warning! Winds reaching up to eighty miles per hour!” he shouted, yanking my arm as I slipped into my boots. “Everybody in the trailer park is going to the shelter.”

“What shelter?” I yelled. “Wait, which is worse, a tornado watch or a warning? I always forget!”

“Would you please just come on, woman?” he yelled, picking me up like I weighed nothing and throwing me over his shoulder caveman-style.

“Wait!” I snagged my purse and laptop bag as he carried me out through the doorway. Of course, he turned around to secure my door and whacked my head against the metal door frame. “Ow!” I yelped.

“We have to move!” And with that, he carried me out into the slashing rain. All of the other trailers were dark, abandoned, but they were rocking back and forth like something out of a dirty trucker joke. I got soaked in just a few moments, my pajama pants clinging to my legs like a second skin. Will’s body heat radiated through his jacket to my stomach as he jogged past the other trailers to a green plastic bulkhead set into what the Fernwood residents loosely called a courtyard. He set me on my feet and led me down a set of steps lit with LED camping lanterns. My head felt funny, itchy at the temple where Will had bumped it against the door.

“Fred!” he yelled. “Is that everybody?”

“Yeah!” Fred shouted over the howling wind. Will nodded and slid a bolt across the hard plastic door, locking us in. The sudden vacuum of quiet was shocking.

“Everybody okay down here?” Will asked, turning his back on me to address the group of guys hovering at the bottom of the stairs, listening to the wind while a weather radio played in the background. I shivered without his body heat and found myself wanting to snake my way under his arm to get that warmth back. My neighbors grumbled their assent and made way for me when I moved toward the relatively open ten-by-twelve-foot space lined in hard green plastic. I felt like I was standing in the world’s largest Girl Scout canteen. Glancing around, I saw Ina Jane, Lula, and Rosalee huddled against the walls with their husbands and children. The kids, still in their pajamas, were wrapped in sleeping bags and blankies, rubbing at their eyes as if they didn’t understand why their parents had dragged them out of bed and into the rain.

“What is this?” I demanded just as a weather radio’s automated voice stated, “If you can hear this message, you are strongly advised to seek shelter immediately . . .”

Now he tells me. Stupid unhelpful robot.

“This is a storm shelter,” Will said, motioning to the kids to scootch together and make room for others. “One of those prefab deals. Miss Martha, your landlord, had it installed a few years ago after a tornado took out some trailers.”

“Don’t you usually have a siren that warns people when the weather is getting this bad?” I asked, swiping at my temple.

“We did, but it shorted out last year and we haven’t been able to repair it yet. So the volunteer fire department runs around town to make sure people get the word. This is my last stop for the night. Come on. Guys, you’re going to want to sit near your families.” Will tugged the “weather watchers” away from the entrance.

I pulled my hand away from my head and gasped at the slick red blood coating my fingertips. My head was bleeding. Will turned at the sound and cursed under his breath. “How did ya manage that?” he said, cupping my chin in his hand as he fished an alcohol wipe out of a wall-mounted first-aid kit.

“Somebody hit me in the head with a door,” I grumbled, wiping the blood on my wet pajama pants. Will gently pushed my hair back from my temple, wincing as he dragged the alcohol wipe across the cut.

“Well, technically, Fancy Pants, I hit the door with you,” he said as I hissed at the cold sting. “Sorry, it’s just a scrape—”

FHOOOM!

The wind sucked the shelter door open, splintering the lock bar and sending plastic shards and tree debris raining over us. Will threw his arms over my head, bending his body protectively over mine as he pushed me against the wall. Dropping my bags on the floor, I pulled him into a sitting position.

“Everybody against the back wall!” Will yelled as we scooted away from the door. Hailstones bounced down the steps like Ping-Pong balls, scattering at our feet. The families around us huddled together, kids tucked safely under their parents’ arms as the wind raged. Fred cursed in a way I wouldn’t have believed was grammatically possible as he struggled up the steps to hold the door closed. After getting pegged by hailstones the size of golf balls, he gave up and plopped down next to us. “Plastic broke off. It won’t latch,” he said. “Best bet is just to stay back away from the door.”

Will tucked my head against his chest, resting his face against my hair. I slid my arms under his and squeezed him tight. “How long will it last?” I called over the noise.

“Who knows?” With Will’s face pressed against my neck, there was no need for him to yell. His mouth was practically touching my ear. “This one isn’t supposed to be that bad.”

“Not that bad!” I exclaimed. “You call this ‘not that bad’?”

“Shh.” He rocked me gently. “You’re gonna scare the kids. Who are handling this better than you, by the way.”

“Not funny—” Before I could finish my retort, a monstrous clanging echoed in the shelter, shaking the ground above us. Will squeezed me tighter, rolling us away from the door, against the legs of the others. What was happening up there? Was the FrankenBug okay, or would it look like a golf ball once the hailstones were done with it? I was struck with a horrifying image of a trailer rolling over the entrance to the shelter, trapping us under it. Would we ever be able to get back out? Would anyone even know we were there?

“It’s okay,” Will promised me, pulling me closer, practically into his lap. “It’s going to be okay.”

And I stayed like that, cradled against his side with my aching head tucked against his neck. I didn’t care if it was needy. I didn’t care if I didn’t know him well enough for this level of snuggling. He was warm and he was solid and he made the insane racket of the chaos over our heads disappear just a little bit.

It was another hour before the wind died down enough that the weather service called off the warning and we were comfortable leaving the shelter. The trailer park was a disaster area. Lawn chairs and bikes were tossed about like litter. A trampoline had flipped over my next-door neighbor’s car. But all of the trailers seemed to be intact except—

“Oh, no!” I groaned.

My trailer had blown over on its side, crumpled and tossed aside like an empty soda can. Two light poles lay on top of it, and on top of the poles lay an overturned truck. On top of the truck lay one of those prefab toolsheds people used to store their lawnmowers and yard tools.

And of course, the front door of the trailer was facedown.

I stood there in the dark, staring at the sight of my overturned trailer, unable to make words beyond “Wha?”

What was I going to do? With the exception of my computer bag and purse, everything I owned was in that trailer. Even I wasn’t small enough to fit through those tiny windows to retrieve my stuff, and I didn’t think Will and the rest of the volunteer fire department would be willing to move the shed and the poles and the truck and turn the trailer over for me just so I could run in and grab some non-novelty pants.

Joe Bob’s hideous FrankenBug, I noticed, had made it through unscathed.

I fished my keys out of my purse and popped open the passenger door. I’d stashed a change of clothes in the FrankenBug after ruining my third pair of pants cleaning out the music hall. I slung the duffel over my shoulder, which was starting to strain under the weight of my purse, my laptop and, now, my gym/overnight bag.

Will approached with one of the men who had huddled in the shelter with his wife and kids. The man was wearing a T-shirt that read MARSHALL TRUCKING SERVICE, and he was rubbing the back of his head like he was equal parts embarrassed and dismayed.

“Bonnie, this is Dwayne Disher, Ina Jane’s husband,” Will told me.

Dwayne gave me a little nod. “Ma’am.”

“Near as we can tell, your trailer got knocked over by the light poles, and then the truck sort of used the poles as a ramp as it rolled and parked on top of it.”

“The emergency brake has been on the fritz. Between that and the wind?” Dwayne made a crashing noise, like a little boy playing with accident-prone toy trucks. He grimaced. “I’m real sorry about that, Miss Bonnie.”

I had to clear my throat a few times before I managed a “Not your fault.”

“My boss’ll come out here and help get the truck off of you, but it could take a while,” he said. “And then the boys and I will try to pry open your trailer and get your stuff out.”

“How long could ‘a while’ be?” I asked.

“Few days,” he said, shrugging. “But until my boss comes by and the insurance guy can get a look at this, I’d appreciate it if you left it alone.” A snigger bubbled up from his chest. “’Cause they’re never gonna believe this unless they see it.” He managed to get his twitching lips back under control and gave me a sheepish look. “Sorry.”

I nodded, my head feeling like a puppet’s on a string, as if someone else was running the controls because I sure didn’t know what to do at this point. “Okay, thanks, Dwayne,” I said, my voice weirdly distant.

“Is your boss gonna be pissed at you about this, Dwayne?” Will asked with some concern.

Dwayne made a dismissive grunt. “Hell no. He’s been wantin’ to replace this truck for a while. Insurance will cover it. He might give me a bonus.”

My eyebrows shot up at the sight of Dwayne’s pleased grin. He cleared his throat. “I’m just gonna go check on Ina Jane and the kids.”

With that, Dwayne disappeared into his trailer, which was upright and not parked under a small mountain of scrap metal.

“Dwayne’s good at finding the bright side,” Will said, giving my arm a squeeze.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I whispered, not wanting Dwayne or my neighbors to see me having a small meltdown. “I don’t even have a toothbrush!”

“It’s gonna be okay,” he promised. “We’ll figure out a way to get your stuff after Dwayne’s boss moves the truck.”

“But that could be days. Where am I supposed to stay in the meantime?”

He frowned. “I would tell ya to stay in one of the motels in town, but I’m not sure . . . Well, they’re not the safest places. I guess you’re just going to have to go home,” he said brightly. I stomped on his foot. He made an “oof” sound. “Too soon?”

“Yes,” I grumbled.

“But you’re snapped out of your little pity party, so . . .” I stomped on his other foot. “Would you stop doing that?”

“I can still work at the music hall—” A sudden, sickening realization hit me. “Oh my gosh, what if the music hall is damaged?”

“Yes,” he muttered. “Wouldn’t that be a shame?”

This time he managed to dodge my foot when I lashed out at his shins. “Will, I need to get over there and see.”

“In your pajamas?”

“I left some of the research materials from the library there. I need to know if I have to go make a large apology to Miss Earlene. Really, I just need to make sure it’s okay. And what else am I going to do?” I gestured toward my overturned home and gave Will my very best Disney-princess eyes, which Kelsey insisted were both all-powerful and evil.

“All right,” he sighed, grimacing as he checked the clotted cut on my head. “Get in my truck. I’m not letting you go over there alone. Lord knows what you’d get up to.”

Driving through town, I could see only minor damage—tree limbs down, street lights out. I guessed it was true what people said about trailer parks attracting bad weather, which was kind of cranky of Mother Nature, if you asked me. We arrived at McBride’s, and I was pleased to see that not only was the building whole, but the security lights were on. I breathed a sigh of relief and hopped out of the truck cab.

“Where are you going?” Will demanded, glaring at the building as if he expected an army of armed possums to burst out at any moment.

“I’m going to check the locks. You want to come with me?”

“No,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument. “Just make it quick.”

As I approached the windows, I could see my workstation inside the food counter area, intact and ready for my return. I jiggled all of the door handles to make sure the Quonset hut was secure and I glanced back at Will. Poor Will, who resented a building so much that he hated to get within ten feet of it.

But at the moment, I was too exhausted to explore his myriad issues. I just wanted to find some flat surface somewhere and fall asleep. I slumped back toward the truck, where Will was waiting. I climbed in easily enough, but for some reason, the act of stretching my seat belt across my torso and clicking the metal tab into the buckle was beyond my gross motor skills.

Will gave a frustrated huff and slid across the bench seat, gently taking the seat belt tab from me with one hand and clutching my fingers with the other. He glanced up at my face, tsking under his breath as he checked the cut on my head again. The metal tab slipped out of his hand as he brushed my hair out of my eyes. All I could do was stare up at his mouth, those soft, pursed lips that he’d pressed against my hair when I was cowering in a dark storm shelter.

And suddenly, those lips were moving closer, pressing against mine and shocking my breath from my body in a muffled “oomph.” My hands flailed out, clutching at his jacket. I pulled him with me as I fell back against the truck door. He grunted as he lost his balance, climbing to his knees on the seat and wrapping my leg around his hip. His tongue slipped into my mouth and I threaded my fingers through his hair.

His hands were everywhere, bending my legs to cradle his hips, cupping my butt to hold me close as he rocked those hips into mine. I didn’t wear a bra to bed, so when Will reached under the thin, damp cotton of my shirt, his cool hands cupped tingling bare flesh. Will was definitely a guy who knew his way around tingling bare flesh.

My breathing became frantic as we struggled out of our damp jackets. Before I could even think about what a bad, irresponsible, stupid idea having post-tornado sex in a truck could be, my hands reached for Will’s belt buckle and tugged. He grinned at me, balancing on his knees to help me manage it. He cupped my face in his hands, accidentally brushing my injured temple with his fingers. I winced, hissing in pain.

The noise seemed to startle Will, making him draw away from me, back across to his side of the truck. He looked so silly, his expression dazed and his pants half-zipped, but I couldn’t find it in me to laugh. He took a deep, steadying breath, hitching up his jeans and starting the truck. “Let’s get home and get you to bed.”

I was afraid to ask him what he meant by that. Had the Red Cross set up some sort of shelter nearby? Maybe he would take me to one of those no-tell motels that secured every other corner in town. I just needed a minute to collect my thoughts, then I would ask him, I told myself. I leaned my forehead against the cool glass window and closed my eyes. Just a minute to think, that was all I needed.

8

In Which I Indulge in Cupcake Therapy

Sunlight, burning red through my eyelids.

I blinked, rolling to my side on the thick, comfy mattress. It was weird that I seemed to be catching a sunbeam right to the face. Usually the trailer didn’t get much early-morning sun.

Wait, the trailer had blown over the night before. And my mattress was nowhere near this comfy. So where the hell was I?

I bolted up in bed, wincing at the sudden strain on my sore back muscles. Huddling in a fetal position in an enclosed space is clearly more strenuous than it seems. I was alone, which was a relief. But I still had no idea who had lent me their bed for the night. Rubbing my eyes, I scanned the room, trying to figure out where Will had dumped me.

I glanced around the room and saw sturdy, clean furniture and plain white walls. The only decoration was a familiar-looking couple posing for an eight-by-ten with a towheaded, bucktoothed little boy. A pennant for Mud Creek High hung over the oak dresser, where I could see a wallet, keys, and a Mud Creek Volunteer Fire Department cap.

I wasn’t wearing pants, I realized as my bare legs rubbed against the soft sheets. Why wasn’t I wearing pants? I was wearing underwear, thank goodness, but the T-shirt I had on wasn’t mine. I glanced down at the emblem on the breast and saw that it was another article from the volunteer fire department. The name over the emblem read MCBRIDE.

Holy bad decisions, Batman.

Had I slept with Will? I remembered my raw exhaustion the night before and the unexpected, and disturbingly welcome, make-out session. I could very easily see myself falling into Will’s bed after being kissed like that. Part of my brain was dismayed at the idea that I may have had sex with someone I needed to work with on a semi-daily basis. The other part of my brain was even more dismayed that I could have slept with him and not remembered it. I at least wanted some memories to regret. I slipped out of the bed quietly, changing into the dry clothes in my gym bag. I cringed at my reflection in the tidy little bathroom. While Will had obviously cleaned and bandaged the laceration on my scalp, my hair looked like I’d combed it with an eggbeater. There were dark shadows under my eyes and a bruise on my temple.

For some strange reason (I blamed the head wound), I stashed the T-shirt marked MCBRIDE in my bag. As I crept into the sunny living room, I could make out the outline of Will’s body underneath an old maroon-and-white log-cabin-pattern quilt stretched across the couch. Surely if we’d actually had sex, Will would have stayed in the bed. I didn’t snore that loudly.

He’d given up his bed and slept on the couch. I smiled down at him fondly, resisting the urge to ruffle his hair and bring the blanket up to his chin.

The nice thing to do, to say thank you, would be to fix him breakfast. But I had things I had to do today. I had to find another place to live. I had to get clothes and basic necessities. I had to figure out how the hell I was going to continue living here in Mud Creek as a scarlet woman.

And frankly, I didn’t want to deal with whatever awkward morning-after conversation was involved when someone who passive-aggressively flirts with you does you a huge favor. And has clearly undressed you at some point. I definitely didn’t want to talk about that.

I picked up my bags from the table beside the front door, holding my keys so they wouldn’t jangle. Once I’d cleared Will’s front door, I called Fred, using the towing service card he’d left me. My chubby chum was more than happy to drive me back to the trailer park and gave me permission to drive his loaner long-distance, since I would need to cover some serious mileage to sort out this problem. I stared at my overturned trailer, forlorn and battered under its trucker’s burden, before pulling the FrankenBug onto the highway toward sanity, toward dry clothing, toward Frankfort.

Kelsey Wade’s apartment building was one of those old-school brick monstrosities in which you did not contemplate the level of lead in the paint for your own mental well-being.

Kelsey was my closest friend at the KCT office, which was pretty funny, considering she was one of the most cynical people I knew. I was the warm milk to her whiskey, the Galinda to her Elphaba. I was the glass-half-full to her “I accidentally smashed the effing glass.”

Kelsey was an odd duck. At the office, she was organized, competent, and super prepared. There were times when she seemed ready to conquer the administrative world with a quirk of her pinky. And then her mother would call, or her “boyfriend,” Darrell, would make one of his idiotic observations, and she’d retreat into herself.

Life as the child of a former Miss Lexington who never got over herself was rough. Kelsey never quite lived up to her mom’s standards, and had only recently figured out that trying was pointless. Kelsey was built like one of those old-fashioned Vargas pinup girls—lush curves, long limbs, and a teeny-tiny waist. Despite the fact that she had assets most women, including myself, would pay good money for, her mom had her convinced she had a “weight problem.”

This self-image paradox, combined with Kelsey’s mother pressuring her to marry any man who would take her in “her condition,” was why Kelsey’s apartment was currently home to her underemployed, overjerkfaced “boyfriend,” Darrell. I was forced to put “boyfriend” in quotation marks because my admittedly weak cursing skills couldn’t come up with a name foul enough to accurately quantify him. Sadie called him an ass-clown, but that seemed unfair to both asses and clowns.

Still, the Mayfair had a cozy, college-dorm feeling, especially when I caught sight of Cyrus, one of Kelsey’s adopted nerd-herd buddies, on her hall. Cyrus was one of four software programmers who lived two doors down from Kelsey—Aaron, Cyrus, Wally, and Bud. When they first moved in, they hadn’t quite evolved beyond their grad school lifestyle, living two to a bedroom and playing video games until three in the morning. Kelsey was drawn to that sort of carefree, not-quite-grown-up lifestyle. Her passion for sci-fi and fantasy TV knew no bounds, so she fit right in as their den mother. She cooked for them on occasion and made sure they left the house for fresh air. In return, they secured bootleg copies of obscure British TV shows and fixed her computer when Darrell downloaded multiple viruses while surfing for porn.

Cyrus, a sweet guy with shocking white-blond hair and rimless glasses, was hefting a huge bag from GameStop under his arm and had a smile on his face that was downright frightening.

“New gaming equipment?” I asked, nodding toward the bag.

“Ergonomic floor cushion,” he said. “Now my butt won’t fall asleep on game nights. Victory is within my grasp.”

“Awesome.”

“Here to see Kelsey?” he asked, raising his pale eyebrows. “Good, Darrell’s at it again.”

I sighed. “What is it this time?”

“Kelsey had the ‘gall’ to ask him to contribute some money to their expenses. They’ve had a lot of bills come in, including a Visa card that Kelsey didn’t know she’d applied for. She asked him to get a job. Darrell got all huffy. He said she’s just a nine-to-fiver, and she couldn’t understand how the entrepreneurial mind works. He needs space and freedom to expand his business without silly things like ‘deadlines’ and ‘expectations.’” Cyrus sneered. “He’s being particularly obnoxious about the fact that she bought herself some new clothes. If they can afford new clothes, he says, they can afford his bills. And his new iPhone.”

“You mean her consignment sale work clothes, which she wears while earning the paycheck that pays for the iPhone?”

Cyrus nodded, a dark look on his face as he unlocked his apartment door. “The boys and I have taken the liberty of e-mailing you a list of the ways we can make his death look like an accident. I believe Sadie would be willing to provide us all with transportation and an alibi.”

I gave him a little salute. I knocked on the door to find the aforementioned “boyfriend” standing before me. Darrell was tall and dark-haired, with an athletic build he’d taken for granted in school, so now he was going soft around the middle. He frowned at me, rolled his eyes, and turned away from the door without a word.

Charmer.

Kelsey, however, bounded from the back bedroom and threw her arms around me. “Sweetie! I’m so glad to see you. What’s going on with your hair? You look all post-traumatic stress. Are you okay?”

“I—”

She gasped. “Oh my God, you didn’t kill that sexy mayor, did you?”

“I—”

“Don’t panic. People make mistakes when they panic and that’s how they get caught. We just have to think this through.”

“Really, Kelsey—”

“We’re going to need shovels and heavy-duty plastic, maybe some lime. And we’ll buy it at different locations all over town. Pay cash. We don’t want a paper trail. And we’ll wear baseball caps to hide our faces from the in-store security cameras.”

“Kelsey, I didn’t kill anybody.”

Kelsey snapped out of planning mode, frowning a little. “Oh, good. But we should probably write all that down, just in case, because I’m pretty sure I had some solid ideas there.”

“Kelsey. Breathe. There was a big storm last night that blew over my trailer. I’m here to get some of my clothes that I stored in your closet. Really, everything is fine.”

“So, no fake alibis and cover-ups,” she huffed, clearly disappointed. “Wait, why are you living in a trailer? And what happened to it?”

“Long story.”

Darrell slunk out of the bedroom in low-slung jeans and the gaudiest Ed Hardy T-shirt I’d ever seen. He didn’t spare either of us a glance as he strolled over to Kelsey’s purse, helped himself to twenty bucks, and walked out the door.

“I’m going to Zach’s,” he called over his shoulder. “We’re gonna be talking business. Don’t wait up.”

I flopped down on the couch, staring up at Kelsey. I couldn’t even make the “would you please” part of my “would you please dump him” face before she told me, “Don’t start.”

Kelsey force-fed me a decent meal—leftover beef pad thai from Golden Palace, thank you very much—and I flopped facedown onto her guest room futon for about twelve hours of sleep. I woke up to hear my ringtone—which Kelsey had apparently changed to a Metallica song while I was sleeping because she knew that drove me crazy—blaring right next to my head.

I slapped at the floor mattress until I managed to close my fingers around my phone. I opened one eye and hit the “Accept” button. “Yello?”

“You took off,” a voice said with a hint of indignation.

Did. Not. Compute.

Clearly, my silence prompted a more thorough opening salvo from my mysterious caller. “You took off, from my house, from my damn bed, without a word. Do you think I let just anyone sleep in my bed?”

“Will?”

“Yes!” he exclaimed. “Unless you got up in the middle of the night and climbed into someone else’s bed.”

I held the phone away from my face and frowned at it.

“Uh, your silence is leaving me with a lot of uncomfortable thinkin’ room,” I heard him say.

I said, “I’m sorry. It was really nice of you to let me stay, but I had so much I needed to sort through and I knew you had to be exhausted. What with the storm duties of the fire department and the stripping me while I slept and all.”

“You could at least have woken me up,” he insisted. “I was a total gentleman. Even after kissing the hell out of you in my truck, I didn’t try anything. I slept on the couch, for goodness’ sake. When I changed you, I didn’t even peek!”

Cue more phone-frowning from me.

He admitted, “Okay, I peeked a little bit.”

“Awesome, and I would imagine that everybody in town knows that you drove me away from the trailer park last night,” I muttered.

“No! Don’t be silly! People have been too worried about storm damage to keep track of you— Okay, yeah, everybody knows,” he admitted. “My neighbor, Rosemarie, saw you sneaking out of my house in the morning and activated the gossip phone tree. But that’s not so bad, right? You might make more friends around town if people think that we’re dating. Not that you have too much trouble in that area, but still.”

“Really, that’s how I should make connections with the community?” I scoffed. “Being your fake girlfriend?”

“Hey, I never said ‘girlfriend.’”

“You have pretend commitment issues, surprise, surprise,” I said drily.

“I’m just saying, you leaving like that made me feel weird,” he said, his tone a bit more serious. “Like I’d hurt you or you were scared of me or something. I didn’t like it.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I just needed to get back to the city and regroup, get some more clothes. I’ll be back soon.”

“Be sure you do,” he said, clearing his throat. “Joe Bob, he worries about you.”

I chuckled. “Joe Bob, huh?”

“Mmmhmm. Not me, of course.”

“Fibber.”

I ended the call and drifted back to sleep. Eventually Kelsey woke me to say that Darrell was staying at a friend’s, so it was safe for me to come out of the guest room. Though she was supposed to be helping Sadie at some historical reenactment, Kelsey took a personal day—something she never did during the busy summer season, so clearly, I was more disheveled than I thought. After gathering a few days’ worth of my “second-tier” clothes, plus my backup reading glasses and some toiletries, I let Kelsey drag me to Sweet Eats, a bakery in Frankfort’s historical district. Sweet Eats was known for cookies the size of dinner plates and cupcakes filled with mysterious and wonderful concoctions of liquor, cream, and jam. Al McKinney, the owner, was like Willy Wonka without the political Oompa-Loompa metaphors. Or you know, the children maimed in industrial accidents.

“You are the only person I know who has a problem with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” Kelsey informed me as we entered the fragrant, cozy shop with its low white tables and deep-cushioned pink-and-green chairs. I was wearing a yellow sundress that Kelsey had coerced me to buy from a secondhand shop and pretty white sandals, which had helped my outlook a little.

“That can’t possibly be true,” I said, asking Al for a softball-size chocolate cupcake covered in toasted marshmallow and coconut.

“Wow, a Mississippi Mud Mountain?” Kelsey winced as I sliced my selection in half, revealing the marshmallow center inside dense chocolate cake. I had already eaten the toasted marshmallow topping. “This must be serious.”

I glanced down at her dessert, one of Al’s low-cal key lime tarts. They were Al’s, so they were still tasty, but they were tiny and they just didn’t leave you with that happy, accomplished feeling that finishing one of his cupcakes did. I didn’t have to ask to know that either Darrell or her mother had made some crack about Kelsey’s weight in the past twenty-four hours. Kelsey only turned to diet food when one of them tried to convince her that her bombshell figure was something she should “work on.”

“Apparently I jiggled a little too much the last time we were in bed,” she said, before I could so much as raise an eyebrow. “He said it was distracting. I mean, he’s the only one that sees me naked, so he does have some vested interest in what I weigh.”

“Did you hear the words that just came out of your mouth? Why are you doing this to yourself? I don’t get it. If this was any other guy, you would have told him to suck one of the many objects in your insult repertoire, and maybe burned some of his stuff in your yard.”

“Who else is going— I mean, I haven’t exactly been raking in the male attention lately.”

“Is that what he tells you?” I hissed quietly. As angry as I was, I wasn’t about to embarrass Kelsey by letting one of the other customers hear our conversation.

Kelsey poked at her tart with her fork. “Not him.”

“Your mother? You know what I think of your mother.”

“It’s not worth breaking up with him. When I do, my mom freaks out and e-mails me all these articles about rising rates of spinsterhood and ticking clocks and tells me how I’m not getting any younger. And how I haven’t exactly been careful with my appearance, so how am I expecting to find someone better?”

Someone better immediately came to mind. Charlie Bennett, the KCT’s resident genius statistician, was a math prodigy with several doctorates from perfectly respectable schools and for some reason had eschewed legitimate academia to design, distribute, and decipher surveys on Kentucky tourism. Kelsey had been secretly, achingly, head-over-heels in love with him for two years.

Aside from his enormous intellectual endowment, Charlie was lean and sleek with a smile that verged on naughty on the rare occasions we saw it. Charlie seemed curious about the rest of us, but unsure how to join in our wacky antics. Kelsey usually translated office conversations into nerd-speak and vice versa. And in return, he brought her fancy coffee at least two days a week.

I had tried to talk Kelsey into admitting her feelings for Charlie I don’t know how many times, but she was so afraid of losing the friendship she had with him that she wouldn’t even flirt with him. And Sadie told me once that without a large billboard directly outside his bedroom window, Charlie would never realize that Kelsey liked him. So she stayed with a man who loafed at home all day playing Guild of Dominion while Kelsey worked her butt off to support both of them.

“I know that Darrell is not a great boyfriend,” she mumbled. “But it’s not like he hits me or anything.”

“That’s our standard now?” I demanded. “He’s never gone all Ike Turner on you, so he’s okay?”

“There are more contemporary domestic violence references, you know,” she said, completely ignoring my observation. “I think you’re spending too much time doing your musical history research.”

“Don’t change the subject . . . even though you’re probably right,” I said. “What I’m saying is that if you waste your time with Darrell, you’re not going to be open and available when you do meet someone who deserves you. Someone nice and sensitive, who loves animals and recycles and holds your hand during the scary parts in movies and has current car insurance.”

“I don’t want to meet him. He sounds like a weenie.”

“He does,” I grumped. “But that doesn’t change the fact that Darrell doesn’t deserve to lick the bottoms of your shoes.”

“Eh, he’s not into the kinky stuff anyway,” she said blithely.

As I twitched in horror at the mental images that brought up, Kelsey asked, “So what’s going on with you?”

“The weather hates me. It knocked my rental trailer over on its side last night, so I won’t be able to get to my stuff for a couple of days. Also, as you know, I have nowhere to live. And I have a feeling that once people figure out what I have planned with the museum, there’s no one in town I would trust enough to let me stay with them without them shaving my head while I sleep.”

“Yikes. So what do you plan on doing?”

“I plan on taking up drinking. Not professionally or anything. Just enthusiastically,” I said.

Kelsey rolled her eyes and tossed a napkin at me, which I used to wipe chocolate frosting off my upper lip.

“So your overall problem isn’t the building, it’s the location, right?”

I frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, the locals don’t care what you do with the building. They just don’t want it to get in the way of the plant. And the people who want to build the plant will only do it if they can get that location. Quonset huts are basically one big piece, right? They can be moved. I mean, we’ve seen hundred-year-old log homes get moved from one place to another. Surely we can kick a big tin can around.”

“But not without considerable expense and a specialized contractor to get it done without damage to the building. And I don’t have that sort of money. I certainly can’t go to my sponsors and say, ‘Hey, I know you’re already giving me an indecent amount of cash, but can you pony up a little bit more to bail me out of a jam of my own making?’”

Kelsey shrugged. “So go to ComfyCheeks and ask them for the money to move the building. And since our office has contact information for most of the transport specialists who would be qualified to move the music hall, you could probably get a pretty good discount.”

And in that moment, I was reminded why Kelsey had not only kept but flourished in her position at the KCT, despite her questionable verbal filters and occasional threatening of interns. She was brilliant. I’d been so focused on the building, I couldn’t see the forest for the trees, so to speak. There was an empty lot right across the road from the original McBride’s site, some former family farm that had gone bankrupt. The only reason that ComfyCheeks wasn’t interested in that location was that it didn’t have the railroad access that the McBride’s lot did. Moving the building would be just a question of careful dismantling. Heck, half of the appeal of Quonset huts was that they could be assembled quickly without skilled labor. Surely taking them apart and moving them a few hundred yards wouldn’t be that much harder, right?

I leaned across the table and kissed Kelsey soundly on the cheek.

“Well, you just gave Al a thrill,” she muttered, glancing over the bakery display case to its grinning proprietor.

“You’re a genius and I love you,” I told her, grabbing my purse and scampering toward the bakery’s front door.

“Hey, where are you going?” she called. “You can’t just leave a Mississippi Mud Mountain half-eaten! We leave no cupcake behind!”

9

In Which I Earn a Scarlet Letter of My Very Own

I spent most of the drive back to Mud Creek rambling notes into my tape recorder. I’d found that scribbling notes on paper while driving tends to upset the other drivers.

Sweating profusely thanks to the wheezing, useless air conditioner, I made lists of tasks. I would need to check the availability of the lot across the street from McBride’s, and if it was unavailable or too costly, who to call for other lots that might suit. I reminded myself to measure the lot and the building to make sure I had the right specs ready, so I wouldn’t look like an idiot when I called the movers for estimates. And I listed all of the other information I would need before I could even think about approaching ComfyCheeks with a proposal.

I would have to keep this quiet, I told myself. If I gave any hint of Kelsey’s Hail Mary plan to anyone in town, miscommunications and misunderstandings might ensue that could bring said plan toppling about my ears. I could end up raising false hopes if it didn’t work out, which would damage my credibility with the townsfolk even more. Once all of the pieces were in place, I would present my complete plan to Will, hopefully with the enthusiastic cooperation of the good people at ComfyCheeks.

Apparently, in all of the excitement to get back to the music hall and start outlining logistics, I drove faster than was advisable in a rusted out, yellow-and-Bondo-colored VW bug, because Jenny Lee pulled me over as I rolled past the city limits.

“Speeding or endangering other drivers through the possible disintegration of my car?” I asked her as I rolled down my window, license in hand. Jenny Lee, looking fairly badass in her uniform and mirrored aviators, waved it away.

“Neither.” She chuckled, handing me a frosty-cold can of Barq’s Root Beer through the window. “Joe Bob warned me that your air conditioner would be on the fritz.”

“God bless Joe Bob.” I sighed, gulping down the cold soda as I climbed out of the car. It was actually cooler outside the car than it was inside, though the heat radiating from the blacktop provided a sweaty contrast.

“You are in an awful hurry to get back into town,” she noted, leaning against the FrankenBug.

“I may have rushed my return, considering I have no idea where I’m sleeping tonight,” I mused, wondering whether the hamburger counter at the music hall would be comfortable enough to double as a bed. “Threw myself right into a situation without thinking. Totally unlike me.”

She grinned at me. “Oh, no worries about that. I have strict instructions to take you to your new lodgings.”

“I can’t wait to find out where that will be,” I muttered into my can of soda.

“So, I hear you and Will are sleeping together,” she said, making me spray root beer all over her face.

“Clearly, it was your poise and graceful manners that drew him to you,” she added as she wiped the sticky fizz from her sunglasses.

“Why—what—why— Why would you say that?” I stammered.

“Well, Fred picked you up from your walk of shame at Will’s house the other morning,” she said. “And Fred’s wife, Nancy, has a big mouth. Word gets around.”

“There was no shame. We didn’t . . . shame,” I said, shaking my head.

“Good. I don’t think there should be any shame in two consenting adults doing the horizontal bop. But, in the interest of full disclosure, Will and I used to be a thing,” she told me. “A pretty serious thing.”

“I didn’t realize Will had ‘things’ with anybody.”

Jenny Lee shrugged. “He didn’t always. Could you please stop pacing? Look, we were engaged once upon a time,” she said. “Right after high school. I hurt him. Badly. I got a wild hair to leave town, go to college, find myself, all that bullshit.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Well, I assumed that Will wanted the same things, which just goes to prove what happens when you assume. And when I got into Ohio State, he was shocked and hurt that I wanted to leave. Like I wasn’t just leaving town, I was choosing to leave him. He proposed, thinking that would help, somehow. We tried to do the long-distance thing that fall, but it didn’t work out. I graduated with my criminal justice degree. I married my Roy. Will ended up changing his plans a little, but he never dated anyone seriously again. He ended up taking over the small repair business that belonged to his mom’s brother. And that was that.”

I drained the last of the soda from the can. “I’m having a really hard time understanding what this has to do with me.”

“My point is that I still care for Will, a lot. I want him to be happy. And if you’re just planning to pull up stakes and take off the minute your project is finished, you should leave Will alone. He doesn’t show it, but gettin’ left hurts him. And if you do hurt him, I will destroy you and everything you ever loved, slowly, deliberately, and with relish.”

I pursed my lips and nodded. “I understand. I can appreciate a healthy destructive urge just like the next girl. But again, I did not have sex with Will.”

“Well, you’re going to have a hard time convincing any adult in Mud Creek with full hearing capacity otherwise.”

I thunked my head back against the car. “I’m going to have to sew a big red A on all of my clothes.”

Jenny Lee shoved my slutty behind in my car and led me to a house hidden behind a cache of live oaks off Main Street. If she hadn’t led me to it, I never would have found it. The three-story Victorian was old but stately. It reminded me of a moldering wedding cake, faded white covered in a fine layer of grayish-green, like something from Miss Havisham’s bridal feast. Jenny helped me carry my spare bag to the porch, where a thin woman with broad shoulders and graying blond hair waited.

“Martha Smallwood, this is Bonnie Turkle.” Miss Martha was not pretty—more like formidable. She had even, handsome features not at all softened by the short, mannish haircut or the little beauty mark at the corner of her mouth. She wore an oversize denim button-up shirt over baggy khakis and men’s work boots. Her bifocals hung on a chain around her neck. She extended a bony hand to me and I shook it, wincing under the power of her iron grip.

“Bonnie Turkle, this is Miss Martha,” Jenny Lee said, adding, “your landlady.”

Miss Martha opened the door, her expression just a bit more sympathetic. “Jenny Lee called me about you. Will and his boys have done everything they can to set the trailer to rights, but the insurance companies only move so fast, you know.”

“I was hoping that you might have some other property I could rent?”

“Nope, they’re all taken, I’m afraid.” Miss Martha looked to Jenny Lee, confused. “You haven’t told her yet?”

Jenny Lee shook her head, looking sheepish.

Miss Martha snorted. “Well, don’t just stand there, letting out all the bought air.”

“What is she talking about?” I asked Jenny Lee.

“Will wanted to make sure you were in a safe, reputable location, and those are sort of few and far between in this town. So Miss Martha has generously agreed to let you live here in her house as a boarder.”

“What?” I yelped. “But, Miss Martha, you don’t even know me!”

“Eh.” Miss Martha took my bag from Jenny Lee without the wincing or straining involved when I tried to lift it. “Your credit score and criminal check came back clear.”

“You ran a background check on me?” I gasped.

“Jenny Lee’s my niece. She owed me a favor.” She ushered us both into an old-fashioned parlor with a fireplace, mauve velvet settees, and a massive sewing machine in the corner. One entire wall was covered in a carefully stacked rainbow of fabric bolts. Miss Martha appeared to be a very organized textile hoarder.

I turned on Jenny Lee. “I thought we were friends.”

“She’s blood,” Jenny Lee said quietly. “And she got me out of hosting Thanksgiving last year. I did owe her. Oh, speaking of which, I’ll be right back.” With that, Jenny Lee jogged back to her cruiser and began fishing around in the backseat.

“You’ll have an upstairs bedroom and an attached bath all to yourself,” Miss Martha told me.

“Well, as long as the house is right side up, I can’t really complain,” I said, making Miss Martha snort.

Jenny Lee emerged from her squad car with a laundry basket stuffed with towels, socks, Mud Creek Mustangs sweatshirts, laundry detergent, a spare toothbrush, and other toiletries. “Florence down at the Dinner Bell put this together for you. A couple of the customers chipped in what they could.”

“Really?” I cried, squeezing the basket to my chest.

“Well, you were the only one in town to get waylaid by the storm,” she said.

I pressed my cheek against one of the secondhand towels, which smelled pleasantly like spring meadow fabric softener. I blinked back the moisture that was gathering in the corners of my eyes.

“Are you crying on me already, girlie?” Miss Martha demanded.

“No,” I sniffled, wiping at my eyes. I patted the towel back into place in the basket. It was such a nice gesture. It was so sweet that people who were struggling to get by themselves were sharing what they had. I felt welcomed, like I was a part of Mud Creek. Even if I was bouncing around town like a Ping-Pong ball, I might actually be able to call it home for a while.

“Well, you’re a little thin-skinned, but I could use the company and someone who can climb a footstool without ending up calling the ambulance. And it will be nice having someone in the house to talk to. I never did have the patience for a cat.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “So I’m your surrogate cat in this scenario?”

“Take the victory while you can, sweetie.”

Grunting, I dragged the fallen tree limb across the gravel parking lot of McBride’s. Well, I tried to, but with my pitiful upper body strength, it was more tugging uselessly and stomping my feet. Normally I would have left this sort of thing to burly workmen, but the limb was blocking the side entrance. I figured I would need that door eventually.

My head turned as Will’s old truck crunched over the gravel and slid to a stop right in front of me. His official duties helping the townsfolk recover from the storm had kept me from seeing him in the two days since my midmorning walk of undeserved shame.

“Will.” I sighed as the truck door opened. “Thank goodness. I have the upper body strength of a T. rex. I need your manly arms.”

It took me a few seconds to recognize that the usual boyish charm was all but gone from Will’s expression as he slammed his truck door. Without preamble, he said, “I got a very interesting phone call this morning, from the manager over at Mud Creek Savings and Loan. Apparently the National Parks Service has requested a review of the deed to the music hall because it’s being considered for designation as a historic landmark.”

Even though my stomach seemed to be dropping through my feet, all I could think was, Wow, when a park ranger says she’ll fast-track something, she doesn’t kid around.

But what I said was, “I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure it was going to go through.”

“So you were just going to let me go on with my silly little plans to invite a major manufacturer here to create the jobs needed to save my town. Do you have any idea what this does to my credibility with the people at ComfyCheeks? Or any other manufacturer who’s going to hear this when it gets around?” he demanded as I peeled off my work gloves and led him inside the music hall. “You were only here because you were going to clean out a bunch of old junk. And now you want the whole building? Why?”

“It’s going to be a museum,” I told him, showing him a copy of the floor plan I’d come up with for the exhibits. “And it’s going to be a great one. My handwriting analyst confirmed that those lyrics were written by Louis Gray. It’s highly likely that he wrote the original draft for ‘Lurlene, Lurlene’ while he was playing here. This building will be a time capsule containing some of the great musical moments in our history, including the composition of one of the most beautiful, poignant pieces of music in the American songbook. This place deserves to be saved for other people to enjoy, Will! It would be a terrible waste to just tear it down. I know you’re upset with me, but I don’t see how we’re on different teams here. All I want to do is preserve a little bit of your history. How can you protect your town and not care about your own family identity?”

“First of all, don’t pretend you belong anywhere near my team,” he shot back, edging close enough to tower over me. “You don’t know what it was like, growin’ up here. I know you’re supposed to remember your childhood in a hazy, golden sort of glow, but mine was special. Mud Creek was just awesome. All of the empty buildings?” He gestured toward the front window, toward the abandoned highway. “Main Street was filled with thrivin’ businesses. Hank’s Barber Shop, Reilly’s Pharmacy, the Dinner Bell. The houses were newer. People actually seemed to care about the town. And then the dog food plant closed. My mom said, ‘Don’t worry, we still have the mill.’ And when the mill closed, we still thought we were okay, because by then the GPS plant was up and runnin’. But you know how that turned out. People started gettin’ nervous, leavin’ town and movin’ to bigger cities or wherever they could find work that wasn’t being yanked out from under them every few years.

“I’m pissed it turned out this way because a handful of people who never set foot within city limits made decisions that hurt all of us. I’m pissed because this used to be a pretty great place to live and through no fault of our own, it’s not that way anymore. I’m pissed because I’m not sure I know how to fix it, or if it can be fixed. But I’m damn sure not goin’ to let somethin’ like sentiment get in the way. I’ve got to make it better for the people who are still here because they either can’t or won’t leave. Mostly can’t.”

My stomach sank. This wasn’t just a case of stubbornness or hurt feelings. Will was scared, and that was my fault. “I’m not trying to mess that up for you. Really, I’m not. I’m just saying that you need to diversify a little. When an entire town invests its existence in a single employer, that ride is going to come to an end. You’re only setting yourself up for this same cycle in another twenty or thirty years, if you’re lucky.”

He scoffed. “So you’re sayin’ we should reject the offer from ComfyCheeks?”

“No, I’m saying you shouldn’t put all of your eggs in one basket. Have you considered that the museum will bring jobs to the community? Between the renovations to the music hall and the increased tourism—”

“You’re talkin’ about a handful of jobs. I need hundreds. And pinnin’ all of our hopes on tourism is a brilliant strategy. That’s never gone wrong before,” he retorted. “All it would take is one bad season and we’d be right back where we started. We’ve never had tourist traffic in Mud Creek. Hell, since the interstate opened, we barely get any traffic at all. Trust me, no one is gonna drive all this way to go to some museum.”

“Because you’ve never had tourist attractions here before,” I insisted. “People came here from states away for the music hall. You don’t know that they wouldn’t do it again to see the museum.”

“History doesn’t put bread on the table, honey. Jobs do. Now, I’d love to sit around and talk about how awesome my family’s place was, back before it stopped makin’ money, like everything else in this town, but I’ve got other fish to fry.”

“Do you really want to spend the rest of your life making underwear?”

“It’s a good, honest job. And how would you like it if some perky little outsider came barreling in without an invitation and told you she was going to do you this huge favor that you don’t want, then tells you that you’re basically a terrible person for not wanting it?”

“I never said that!” I exclaimed.

“The ‘you’re a terrible person’ was silent.”

I reached behind the bar and pulled out a copy of the list of sponsors I’d contacted so far. “Look, I have a plan in place. This is a list of sponsors. I’ve asked half of them for help starting up the museum and the others for contributions to put toward renovations and moving costs. All I have to do is get enough contributions from these sponsors to move the building to another lot.”

“Which you don’t own,” he snorted, sticking the list in his pocket.

“Well, no, I haven’t found one yet. But again, if I could get enough sponsors—”

“So we’re supposed to just hope that you can get this all worked out in just a few months?”

“I can do this, Will,” I swore. “I know I can do this if you’ll just trust me.”

“Trust you?” he exclaimed. “You’ve pretty much guaranteed that will never happen again. I’ve spent too much time trusting crazy dreamers and their half-baked plans. I don’t need promises. I need real solutions. I’ve got real problems. And you just became one of them.”

With that, he stomped out of the music hall and brought his truck roaring to life. I winced as gravel spun out from under his tires and peppered the front window.

I wished Will hadn’t touched a nerve. I wished that his theories on my do-gooderism didn’t hurt my feelings. I wished I was as optimistic as I pretended to be.

10

In Which My Butt Catches the Bull by the Horns

Miss Martha was an attentive, if inconsistent, hostess. While she lived simply and didn’t seem to care much for the antiques in her home, her family had clearly had money at some point. My guest room was an opulent oriental-themed dream room circa 1956. The walls were papered in elaborate cherry blossom designs. My dressing table had a huge round stylized mirror with classic scrollwork, not to mention the sculpture of a young Japanese woman reclining on a bench. I slept in a dark maple four-poster with a shockingly small mattress. Between the size and the fact that the mattress sank down into the frame as I slept, I felt like I was sleeping in a dresser drawer. Clearly, beds were sized differently in the “old days.”

Miss Martha had small hips and shoulders that were slightly stooped, from a lifetime of bending over a sewing machine, I imagined. A pair of heavy black glasses hung from a beaded chain around her neck. The only makeup she wore was a raisin-colored lipstick, and that was only on special occasions. She believed in big Southern-standard meals: chicken-fried steak, tuna noodle casseroles, and smothered pork chops, served with vegetables that had lost their nutritional content long before they reached the table. And all meals were immediately followed by unfiltered cigarettes on the back porch. She was pretty nice about my not joining her in smoking.

Miss Martha was always sewing some project, usually something small she could keep in her lap while we talked. It was always something different; blue satin one day, black velveteen the next. And there seemed to be a lot of plastic boning involved. I never saw the completed projects, but I figured if she wanted to share them with me, she would. And I think she appreciated the fact that I didn’t pry.

I mostly kept to my room when I was home, so my time with Miss Martha was usually limited to mealtimes and late evenings after I got back from the music hall. I was working like a dog at McBride’s. I cleaned. I scrapped debris after I determined it had no historical value. I smuggled two student volunteers from a local community college history class and had them scrubbing the hamburger counter for extra credit, until the stainless steel was so clean we could have used it for food service again. I contacted Sadie’s approved fabricators to discuss designs for the displays. I placed orders for the TV screens and digital displays I would need. I hired a contractor to rewire the building to allow for the increased electrical use without an actual fire. I carefully removed posters from the walls and arranged for them to be shipped to my framers, along with whatever photos I could salvage. Featured photos and documents would go under specially lit Plexiglas cases. I catalogued artifacts as I found them and sketched out where they would be placed in the displays. I cleaned everything meticulously. I took note of every initial and heart I found carved in the paneling and made plans to frame and highlight them. “HH ♥ GS” and “LG loves EM.” And in the back of my head, I tried to shape these plans so I could pick them up and move them to another location.

I didn’t see Will for the better part of a week. But word of my “meddling” seemed to have spread throughout town. My debit card was declined at the Piggly Wiggly. The gas pumps magically stopped working when I tried to fill up at the Gas’n’Go. My application for a post office box was rejected. I didn’t know it was possible for that to happen unless you were suspected of smuggling drugs into the country. Apparently Norma, the postmaster, thought I looked shifty because I dared to fill out the application on a Saturday.

I was fortunate that Miss Martha, quote, “didn’t give a damn what everybody else thought” as long as I didn’t mess with the thermostat. But it still stung when I walked into the Dinner Bell and was met with total silence. You know that paranoid feeling you get when you walk into a room and a conversation suddenly stops? So much worse when multiplied by an entire room of people who develop a sudden, keen interest in their blue plate specials.

My stomach growled at the scent of frying bacon and hot bread wafting out of the cloudy glass front door. I claimed an empty booth, placed my order with an indifferent waitress named Chrissy, and sipped the strong black coffee . . . which I promptly spit back into my cup when I saw the front page of the Mud Creek Ledger at another table.

It was my face, bug-eyed and faintly swollen, as if I’d been crying. And there seemed to be smoke rolling behind me in the background. I bolted up from the table, digging through my pockets as I ran to the front of the diner, where a battered red metal box sold copies of the Ledger.

I put a quarter in the slot, but like most things in this town, the machine was out of order, and it dropped open before I could complete my payment. I frowned down at the front page headline: STATE TOURISM OFFICIAL DERAILS PLAN TO SAVE TOWN. Somehow, Will must have snapped a photo during my roadside breakdown, because there I was above the fold, pale and stricken in blurry dot-matrix print.

Well, that explained why everybody had stopped talking when I walked into the diner. Clearly these people were Ledger subscribers. I wanted to cover my face with the newspaper, run to the car, and hide. And then cry. With ice cream.

And I almost did exactly that. I’d turned my feet toward my borrowed bug and was searching my pockets for the keys when I saw Will’s truck rumble down the street and circle into the Dinner Bell parking lot. I froze. If I left now, he would see me running, and he would know that he’d gotten to me. I couldn’t have that.

I tucked the paper under my arm, ignoring the stares of the other patrons as I scurried back to my table. My pancakes were waiting for me. I made a sort of meditation exercise out of buttering them and running rivers of syrup over the fluffy golden layers before I could face the newspaper story.

I took a bite, and then a deep breath, and skimmed the first paragraph.

Plans to build a factory that would provide more than three hundred jobs to the town’s underemployed citizens have been put on hold indefinitely as city officials deal with Kentucky Commission on Tourism historian Bonnie Turkle, who has appropriated the property as a historic landmark.

And that was the nicest thing the reporter had to say about me. There were subtle digs at the uselessness of my project. How it would be very comforting to know that the town’s musical heritage was being preserved when its citizens had to move out of town to find employment elsewhere. How it would have been nice for the citizens to get some input in how said musical heritage would be treated. (Okay, they may have had a point there.) And there were several comments from random citizens doubting whether an “outsider” would be able to do McBride’s justice. The article stated that I was unavailable for comment. I didn’t recall getting any phone calls the night before.

Whoever R. M. Fitzpatrick was, we were going to have some words. And a lot of them were going to have four letters. Okay, I would have Kelsey write some down for me. She was way better at that sort of thing. Did he let Will dictate his story to him word for word? What happened to a free, unbiased press?

The story included a “see also Letters to the Editor” reference leading me to the editorial page. Will had written an open letter to each and every one of the sponsors on the list he’d taken during our argument, detailing why the town had no need for a music museum, the long and varied list of other uses the citizens had for the property, and the “underhanded, deceptive practices” I’d used to swipe the music hall property out from under him. The letter closed with, “The people of Mud Creek don’t need Ms. Turkle’s meddling condescension. She believes she is trying to preserve some sort of mystical historical mecca, but in her ill-informed, addlepated liberal stubbornness, she is singlehandedly destroying an entire town.”

The editor’s note stated that the letter had been sent to each of the sponsors’ corporate offices, but that at the time of publication, Mayor McBride had not received any responses. I wanted to curl up in the booth and die. Or possibly tunnel my way out under the table. All of the people in this room had most likely read the article, and it was even more likely that they felt the same way Will did.

This is what happened when I messed around with the forces of karma.

“Don’t take the newspaper story too personal,” Jenny Lee told me, appearing at the end of my table. “When I was runnin’ for office, Rosemarie had the nerve to bring up my ‘inappropriate interactions with fellow students’ under the bleachers when we were all in high school. She’s a grudge holder, which is a shame when it’s combined with a long memory and overactive typing fingers.”

“Rosemarie?” I asked, tipping my head to the side.

“‘R. M. Fitzpatrick,’” she said, slinging her hip into the seat opposite me while making air quote fingers. “The reporter Will got to write the newspaper article about ya. Awful picture, by the way.”

Oh, so “he” was a “she.” And she was sort of mean. I felt a low-burning flash of irritation with Will for having done exactly what I suspected him of doing. It really sucked to have my expectations fulfilled. “Why would she do that for Will?”

Jenny Lee waved to an older waitress with a thin frame and fantastic black cat’s-eye glasses. The henna-haired waitress, whose name was Florence, poured Jenny Lee a cup of decaf and gave me a warm smile. “Honey, you may not hear this from a lot of people, but I’m glad you’re saving the old place. I had my first date at McBride’s. Jimmy Yancey. Boy had hands like an octopus. Just when I thought I’d blocked one, there was another on my rear.”

My eyebrows shot up. “I’m sorry.”

Florence smirked. “Don’t be. I married him.”

I stared up at her, unsure how to respond to that. She winked at me. “Well, I’m glad you’re here to save it, honey. Even if it does destroy the town’s chances of bouncing back.” She smiled blithely and drifted away from us, leaving me to drop my head to the table.

“I have a feeling I’m going to be getting a lot more of that sort of response,” I muttered into the Formica. She tapped a finger on my head, forcing me to look up at her.

“There you are. As I was sayin’, part of Rosemarie’s long memory includes holding on to hopeless crushes she had in high school,” she said as Will casually strolled into the diner, waving at his many admirers.

“And Will knew that,” I grunted, ripping open a cup of creamer, which splashed all over the table. I sighed, wiping up the spill with a few napkins. I tried again, only to lose my grip on the tiny plastic cup and send it flying across the table. Jenny Lee caught it with deft fingers, one corner of her lush mouth lifting.

“Taking out your frustrations on innocent nondairy products?” she asked.

“It’s better than taking it out on bystanders.” I glared up at the errant mayor as he sidled up to the counter and chatted casually with Fred, as if he weren’t late for an appointment with me, as if he couldn’t see me sitting here waiting for him.

“I don’t think so,” Jenny Lee said placidly, stirring sugar into her cup. “When I’m having a bad day, I just take the cruiser to the exit ramp, fire up the laser gun, and issue a few tickets to out-of-towners.”

“That seems . . . wrong.”

She shrugged. “Eh, new cruiser has to be paid for somehow. Besides, if they weren’t speeding, I wouldn’t have anything to ticket them for.”

“Moral relativism is a slippery slope, Sheriff,” I said drily as I stared holes into Will’s back.

Jenny Lee chuckled, glancing over her shoulder toward the counter. “Well, why don’t you go over there and drag Will’s butt to this table? I think you’ve taken out the best part of your anger on the creamer.”

“It’s cute that you think that,” I told her. Over the top edge of the paper, I watched Will wander through the diner glad-handing and being all “hail fellow well met.” He shook every hand, slapped every back, and had something clever to say to each and every diner. I couldn’t help but notice that like most of the female patrons, my waitress, Chrissy, became a lot less indifferent at the sight of the mayor. She straightened her maroon Dinner Bell T-shirt and fluffed her hair in anticipation of her turn.

I rolled my eyes. I’d been wrong before when I’d dubbed him the Roadside Cowboy and thought him a rare breed. I’d definitely met his type before, time and time again while bouncing around the state—cocky, self-assured, and absolute hell to deal with. How did they always end up elected to public office?

I grumbled into my pancakes, lamenting the inherent flaws in the democratic system and its tendency to attract douche bags, which prevented me from hearing Will’s work boots clomping across the tile floor.

“Hey, you saw the newspaper,” he said, as if he were discussing some front-page puff piece and not the possible implosion of my project and career.

“You are such an . . . A-hole,” I bit out as harshly as I could manage.

Jenny Lee eyed Will as she pushed up from her seat, carefully negotiating her gun belt around the edge of the table. “Don’t screw this up.”

“Nice hatchet job in the paper,” I hissed.

He tucked his sunglasses into the pocket of his blue flannel shirt. I really didn’t want to notice that the color made his eyes look like forget-me-nots. “I don’t write for the paper. Except for the letter to the editor, of course. I don’t control the press.”

“No, but you took a very nice photo,” I shot back, jabbing my finger at the offending snapshot. “When did you even have time to take that without my noticing?”

“I thought it captured your best side.”

“So, in good faith, I tell you that I’m trying to find sponsors to help move the building to another location and you take that as an opportunity to write to those sponsors and prevent me from possibly getting any help from them? Are you at all familiar with the expression ‘cutting off your nose to spite your face’?”

“Well, I figured rather than waitin’ for you to maybe find a solution that would help us out of this situation that you created, I would just get rid of the situation altogether. At this point, I would think it would be easier to walk away, before ya get started.”

“You’re the devil,” I told him.

He grinned at me. “But a handsome devil.”

I smiled sweetly and said, in a voice loud enough that the people in the next booth could hear, “I think you should know that I will do everything I can to work with you and create the best possible solution to this situation.” I leaned in close enough to whisper, so that only he could hear, “But I am going to get you for this. You won’t know when it’s coming, but one day soon, you will be in the kind of pain that only a professional therapist can help you recover from. And you will know that we’re even.”

“Gosh, you’re cute when you’re mad. Yeow!” he yelped when I pressed a fork into the back of his hand. He snatched it back, rubbing the circulation back into his skin. “Well, excuse me for interrupting your breakfast.” He turned and waved to someone sitting at the lunch counter. “I just wanted to introduce you to Gary Baker and Bess Hansen,” he said. Behind him, a tall guy around Will’s age with thick dark hair under a green hat reading MUD CREEK MUSTANGS stood, staring through me. Bess was a curvy redhead with an anxious expression. She glanced around the diner like she was afraid she would get in trouble for talking to me.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, glancing up at them, wary about the direction of this conversation.

Will stood and clapped Gary on the back. What the hell was with this back-clapping thing? “I went to school with Gary. He’s a great guy. Bess had a crush on him since we were kids and only worked up the nerve to tell him about it last year. Gary and Bess would love to get married, but both of them got laid off when the GloboMap factory shut down. They don’t want to start their lives together without prospects, ya know. And they would have gotten jobs at the plant, but now they’re going to have to leave town.”

I narrowed my eyes at Will and attempted to melt his face with the power of my mind, like in that last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

“Nice to meet you,” I said awkwardly. Gary started to say something, then harrumphed and turned toward the front of the diner, taking Bess’s hand as he passed. She waved timidly over her shoulder, her expression shifting from anxious to pitying. That stung a little.

Will smiled blithely as he waved over a man in his late thirties with sandy brown hair and enormous bags under his dark eyes. This was a man who spent a lot of nights worrying instead of sleeping. I sighed, trying not to let my irritation show. It wasn’t this guy’s fault that Will was using him as an object lesson. “Bert and his wife, Cindy, and their two kids lost their house last year. They’re livin’ in a guest room in his parents’ house. They were hopin’ to move out next year when they got jobs at the new factory. Now . . . who knows?”

He waved over another guy, stubby and jowled, with a baleful glitter to his gaze as he approached the table. “Clint here used to manage the GloboMap plant. He got exactly jack squat for a severance because he spent so much time tryin’ to make sure his employees were taken care of that he pissed off the corporate bigwigs. Still, he got a good enough reference from his immediate supervisor that he was supposed to be fast-tracked for management at the ComfyCheeks plant. Clint is the proud father of four, two of whom started college this year.”

“Six,” Clint said, his eyes never leaving mine as Will spoke.

Will raised his brows, turning to Clint. “Sorry?”

“Father of six,” Clint said gruffly. “Melissa’s pregnant again. Just found out we’re having twins.”

“Congratulations,” Will said, patting his shoulder with a sympathetic air.

The corner of Clint’s mouth lifted, as if he was pleased about the development but was too cautious to show it. He snapped out of his reverie to give me a pointed look. “Well, it will be interesting figurin’ out how to feed them, that’s for sure.”

“Give Melissa my best,” Will said, shaking Clint’s hand. He turned toward the counter and lifted his hand to wave someone else over. I grabbed his hand and pressed it against the table. A pleasant little hum of electricity zipped up my arm and spread across my chest. He locked eyes with me, a confused grimace twisting his mouth just before I snatched my hand back.

“Stop,” I growled. “Stop the parade of people who want to bury me in an abandoned outhouse somewhere. What’s next? Are you going to gather all of the children of the people whose lives I’ve ‘ruined’ together to sing ‘We Are the World’? I get it. You’re upset with me.”

Will pursed his lips. “Somehow, that just doesn’t cut it. The thing is that you think of yourself as outside of this problem, like it doesn’t affect you. And I will guarantee that it does. I want you to see these aren’t nameless, faceless numbers. These are people with families and homes they’re going to lose. When towns fail like this, it’s just a matter of dominos falling. One business closes. And then another and another, until all you’re left with are empty storefronts and crumbling houses. And this is a hell of a domino you just kicked over.”

“I understand that. I don’t want to hurt anybody. I don’t want to cause problems. But there are good reasons to consider restoration instead of demolition. Diversifying your employment pool, bringing outside money into the economy, preserving a little piece of local culture. I am willing to work with you on this,” I said in a low voice. “You don’t have to be such a jerk about it.”

He scoffed, grinning as if my calling him a jerk was hilarious. And I couldn’t help but be a little dazzled by that smile, even through the anger. It was like dark clouds parting to make way for . . .

“Let there be light!” I exclaimed, my whole body jerking as I had an actual lightbulb moment.

“Oh, now you’re God?” he huffed, rolling his eyes and rubbing at his leg where I’d kicked it. Several diners at the surrounding tables turned to watch our exchange, their conversations bleeding away so they could hear us better.

“Sorry,” Will told them, waving them off. “She’s nuts. Go about your business.”

I kicked him again, not so accidentally. “No! Let there be light. I know where that comes from.”

He scowled, moving his legs out of my range. “Yeah, it’s the Bible, hence the God joke.”

“No, there’s a carving on the front of the library, ‘Let there be light,’” I said, scrolling down the screen of my phone so I could google the Bothwell library system. The screen got stuck on a rotating hourglass screen because there was no 4G access in this area. I sighed, dropping the phone back into my purse. “It’s been bothering me every time I visit Miss Earlene, just gnawing at the corner of my brain like one of those little bugs in Star Trek. ‘Let there be light’ is what Jackson Bothwell had carved into a lot of the libraries he had built in the late 1880s to early 1920s. He built thousands of them, including something like thirty in Kentucky. The fact that yours is still standing is sort of remarkable. Smaller towns, where the governments can’t afford to keep them maintained, have been forced to tear them down.”

He scowled at me again. “What are you implying?”

“Nothing,” I assured him. “But I happen to know the Bothwell Corporation just announced a program that will assist in the restoration of dilapidated Bothwell libraries.”

“Why would they do that?”

I grinned. “Because it’s bad for the public image for the company name to be attached to a building that’s falling apart. I could help Miss Earlene find funding to fix up the library,” I said. “There are plenty of grant programs that could help Mud Creek, programs that would renew Main Street, provide before- and after-school care for the elementary school kids while their parents are at work, install an employment center here in town. The grants are harder to get since the economy tanked, but they’re out there. I could help you put together the proposals. Heck, I might be able to help Miss Earlene find some historical restoration funds to help rebuild town hall. You can’t operate out of a trailer forever.”

“Grant money can’t be your answer to everything!” he hissed, clearly trying to avoid being overheard. That’s when I realized this was probably not the best place to have this conversation. I’d gone too far, trying to ingratiate myself with Will’s political side by offering my help, and now his pride was smarting.

“That’s why those programs are there!” I whispered back.

“That money has to come from somewhere, ya know,” Will said, still glancing around the diner to make sure he wasn’t being overheard. “Grants don’t just appear out of thin air. Usually, they come from the taxpayers’ pocket. I’m not going to take money from some other poor sucker because I couldn’t figure out a solution on my own.”

“Government grants are funded through public funds, yes, but these are private corporate funds. If a company wants to help you, why not let it? There’s nothing wrong with asking for help,” I said quietly.

He leaned over the table and, in the most serious tone I’d ever heard him use, said, “People here, they won’t accept charity. Do you understand? We’ve got a food bank, but nobody uses it. We don’t get aid programs that most low-income counties get because a lot of those grants are based on the number of students receivin’ free school lunches through federal food programs. And the families around here refuse to fill out the forms for their kids to get the lunches because they don’t want the people in the school office knowin’ they need help. They’ll send their kids to school with oleo sandwiches rather than accept charity. Hell, Tommy couldn’t get the seniors to sign up for Meals on Wheels, and he’s related to a good number of them.”

“I’m not trying to say—”

“I know what you’re trying to say. You think you know better. You’re here to save us from ourselves, right? Heck, maybe if you try hard enough we’ll name something after you. Do-gooders love that sort of thing, right? Plaques and statues and—”

“I don’t even know why I’m trying to have a conversation with you about this,” I grumbled, closing my notebook.

“Where the hell do you come from, talkin’ like that?” he scoffed.

“I’m not from anywhere,” I told him, pushing up from the table. “And for the record, this is going to be the last word: Go to hell.”

“Well, you’re stubborn. I’ll give you that.” His lips twitched as he rose from the booth. “Tell your boss I said hello.”

Will’s parting shot didn’t make any sense until I got to the FrankenBug and my phone rang. I glanced at the screen and frowned, debating whether to answer it. Why was Sadie calling me? She rarely called when I was out of the office unless it was to get a progress report. And I hadn’t been in Mud Creek long enough to have made progress. If anything, I might have regressed a little. Or a lot.

I was so tempted to hit “Ignore.” But if I let it go to voice mail, she would know something was up, and then she’d just keep calling. And if she continued calling long enough, unanswered, she might get irritated enough to drive the four hours to Mud Creek and “visit” me. Her version of visiting sometimes involved lectures and reorganizing my supplies.

No sooner than I’d hit “Accept,” I heard Sadie’s cheerful “I’m making a public presentation” voice say, “Hey, Bonnie, how’s it going?”

I stuttered, “Uh, f-fine.”

“Great. Great. I’m glad to hear it. You know Kelsey worries about you when you’re in the field. And she says to tell you that you left your phone charger at her apartment,” Sadie gabbed, all politeness. Her voice sounded so normal, so bland and businesslike, that I relaxed. Maybe she was just calling to check in. It was possible. This was, after all, the farthest I’d worked from the Frankfort offices. And then I heard her shuffle something on her desk and clear her throat. “Oh, and would you mind telling me why I got the front page of the Mud Creek Ledger faxed to me this morning with the headline ‘State tourism official derails plan to save town’? Or why Ray got a call from a Mayor Will McBride demanding to know why our office sent a, quote, ‘idiot history lady who doesn’t know how to drive without setting a car on fire’ to destroy his town?”

“I can explain about the car,” I told her.

“What is going on down there?” she demanded. “Last I heard, you were submitting a rather fabulous proposal for a museum there in town. And suddenly, you’re about to be run out of said town on a rail? I thought the mayor’s name was McGlory. How could you have deposed a small-town political regime, installed a new one, and then pissed it off in just a few weeks? This isn’t like you, Bonnie.”

There went my hopes for a promotion. I would be lucky to keep my job after this. There had to be a way to spin this that didn’t lead to my immediate dismissal and deportation from the state by catapult.

Nope, Sadie was the mistress of spin. She would see through any excuses or slick stories. And she would be insulted that I even attempted. The best course of action was to fess up and hope that she would be merciful, or that her catapult was in the shop. So I gave her a quick and dirty summary of events so far, including the newspaper disaster.

“Look, sweetie, I understand you wanting to save the place. You’re one giant bleeding heart. There’s no way you could resist. And that would have been fine if you hadn’t done something sneaky and underhanded and alienated an entire town in the process. Leave the sneaky and underhanded stuff to the people who are good at it. Like Kelsey.”

I heard a thump of something breaking in the background of Sadie’s office. “Kelsey just throw something at you?” I asked.

“Post-it holder,” Sadie supplied.

On the other end of the line, I heard her take a deep breath. “Bonnie, I value your work and your contributions to the commission. But you will figure out a way to make this work. You will work with the locals. You will try to find some compromise. You will do whatever you can to convince them that this museum is the best thing that ever happened to their town. You will create the best possible outcome for this situation. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I mumbled, not bothering to mention that I’d promised something remarkably similar to Will earlier. Because I didn’t think that would improve things for me.

“Because if you don’t fix this, I am having Kelsey pull a press release from my doomsday file.”

I cringed. Sadie only pulled her prewritten, fill-in-the-public-relations-disaster press releases from the worst-possible-scenario doomsday file when she was really nervous. Her potential scenarios included “misfired cannon at state-sponsored historical reenactment,” “governor hits senior citizen in face with shovel during park groundbreaking,” and “zombie outbreak at Kentucky Derby.” This did not bode well. No KCT employee whose work had led to a doomsday file release had stayed employed.

“I’ll fix it, Sadie, I promise.”

11

In Which I Discover the Many Layers of Miss Martha

I sat in Miss Martha’s living room surrounded by Brenda’s photos, trying to arrange them into a timeline marked with dated Post-its. Despite the fact that the landmark designation was moving right along in the approval committee, it had not been a good week for me.

The sponsors who had received Will’s letter responded at every point along the spectrum from blacklisting my proposal to “We find your actions unprofessional and embarrassing—don’t contact us again. Ever.” Will had followed up his initial volley by sending copies of his anti-Bonnie letter to the state commissioner of tourism, the state parks department, and the governor’s public relations office. Needless to say, after the amount of tap dancing she’d had to do to shield me from bureaucratic wrath, Sadie was none too pleased with me. And Miss Martha still seemed to think of me as her surrogate cat.

The cat lover in question shuffled into the room, beer in hand, and glanced over my shoulder.

“Actually, honey, the Blue Notes played at McBride’s in June 1962. The Wilson Morris Band played there four months later. They had such a similar sound that George wanted to space them out. He was smart that way, knowing people didn’t want too much of a good thing at the same time.”

I glanced up at her. “You knew Mr. McBride?”

“Oh, sure,” she said, carefully lowering herself into a mauve wingback chair. “I was George’s booker.”

“And by that, I guess you don’t mean that you did his accounting for him.”

She snorted into her beer bottle. “The only math I do is measurements and seam allowances.” She reached into her workbasket and held up a small green satin piece covered in black lace. “I was the one who helped George book all of his acts the first few years.”

My mouth fell open so wide that my chin seemed to be resting on my collarbone. I was not proud of myself. I normally had more dignity than this during research interviews. “And how did you have connections to the music industry?”

Miss Martha drained her beer and gave a discreet, noiseless belch before hauling herself back out of her chair, saying, “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

Slowly but surely, Miss Martha led me upstairs to a guest room two doors down from my bathroom. The door had been closed since I’d moved in. I’d assumed it was a storage closet or something. But when Miss Martha opened the door, it felt like stepping into a historian’s wonderland.

As long as that historian specialized in ladies’ undies.

Every wall was decorated with black-and-white eight-by-tens of pinup girls posing in fancy corsets and fishnet stockings. Miss Martha had arranged shadow-boxed corset sets in between the frames. They were older, but beautifully maintained. The embroidery was still brilliant against the rainbow of satins and silks. While a few were just gorgeous examples of needlework—silver scrollwork over lilac, black floral stitches over ice blue, and gold flames over red silk—others had themes. A patriotic corset looked a little like Captain America’s costume, only there were two stars on the chest instead of one. And those stars were stitched on the bra cups instead of the shield. My favorite was a mermaid costume with seashells over the breasts and rows of tiny stitched starfish leading to the waistline.

I picked up an old black-and-white picture of a sleek blonde lying across a sofa and winking over her shoulder at the camera. She had perfectly executed eye makeup and a tiny little beauty mark at the corner of her lips. I looked over to Miss Martha, who had a not-so-tiny-anymore black mark at the corner of her mouth.

“This is you?” I exclaimed.

“The surprise in your voice is a little insulting,” she muttered.

“You were a stripper?” I marveled.

She gave my shoulder a none-too-gentle nudge and scoffed, “The term is ‘burlesque dancer.’ Smart-ass. And I couldn’t dance at gunpoint. The girls made me take that photo. They said it was unfair that I did all of the work and never got to have any of the fun.”

And suddenly, those undersize pieces of silk and lace scattered around the house made a lot more sense. “You made their costumes.”

“Every stitch,” she said proudly. “My mother was a seamstress, taught me everything she knew. We were living up in Newport, near Cincinnati. You wouldn’t believe the scene back in the late forties. The girls from the clubs all needed costumes that wouldn’t fall apart at the first turn. I had what you might call a cottage industry. And then I met my Hiram and moved here to be closer to his family.”

“Aw, that’s sort of sweet.”

“He was an idiot, from a family of idiots,” she said drily.

“Oh.” I bit my lip as she began to search among the scrapbooks stored on a nearby shelf. “Sorry.”

“Well, I kept in touch with the girls and when they needed new costumes, they’d come for a visit,” she said, flipping through one of the albums. “I had to sneak them into the house when Hiram was at work. He said they were a bad influence. But I kept sewing, the girls kept coming, and Hiram pretended not to see. The extra money saw us through some hard times, even if Hiram didn’t want to admit where it came from. Things changed over the years, though. I knew it was time to get out of the business when a woman named Peaches wanted me to make her what looked like an eye patch out of lime-green spandex,” she grumbled.

“It’s important to know your limits,” I said, patting her shoulder.

“Nowadays, I stick to corsetry. There’s all kinds of people out there who want a good-quality custom corset. Historical reenactors, cosplayers, costume companies, people who make their living in ways I don’t ask about. I get the orders and measurements off my Web site.”

“You’ve got more layers than an onion, don’t you, Miss Martha?”

“Don’t you forget it, kid.” She smirked up at me, turning the album around so I could see it. The pages were filled with shots of the McBride’s stage.

“The girls traveled the same circuit as the musicians. In fact, some of them performed right here in town, at some of the seedier boardinghouses where the musicians stayed. George wouldn’t allow burlesque at McBride’s, of course. But if he saw them in town, he always treated the dancers like the ladies they were. So they were more than willing to refer people from the music circuits to me, and I would pass that information on to George. Eventually he just cut out the middleman and gave me my own desk in the office.”

“But how did you make connections with so many different types of bands?”

“Burlesque dancers traveled the chitlin circuit and the country circuit. I didn’t realize it was such a big deal until our first few integrated concerts. There was a quick-rigged balcony, where the black customers were supposed to sit. And it never occurred to me that this was anything but normal. But there was only one set of bathrooms. George wasn’t about to tell a bunch of ladies that they had to walk down the road to the Texaco station just to powder their noses.

“So everybody was allowed to use the same johns. And that little bit of unusual became normal. There were very few black folks at the country shows, but a lot of people wanted to attend the R&B shows. Originally, the white kids would stay up in the balcony while the black folks danced to keep the crowds separated. Slowly but surely, some of the white boys drifted downstairs and asked some of the black gals to dance. Sometimes there was a fight, sometimes it was just an embarrassing display of bad dancing. But that smoothed out eventually, too. And the strange thing was, that ‘new kind of normal’ started spreading around town. Suddenly it didn’t seem so unusual to see black people sitting at the counter at the Dinner Bell or sitting in the same row at the movie theater. So when it came time for integrating the schools and everything, we didn’t have nearly the same problems that other towns did. George McBride set Mud Creek ahead about twenty years in terms of race relations.”

I could practically hear Miss Martha’s voice repeating this information over a video slide show of the photos I’d found of white and black customers dancing together at McBride’s. It was like she was gifting me historical copy. “I sort of want to hug you right now, Miss Martha.”

“Resist the urge, sweet pea.”

“And you took all of these photos?” I asked.

“Some of them. Mrs. McBride took the rest and shared them with me. I’ve got about four more albums over there, filled with pictures of the singers. You’re welcome to make copies with that little printer thing and use them. It’d be nice to know someone was enjoying them.”

“She was a busy little shutterbug.” My historian heart beat with a greed I can only compare to that of those Nazis in the Indiana Jones movies every time they swiped his artifacts. “I’ve been living here for weeks, and you didn’t mention this?”

Miss Martha shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”

With general renovations started and my timeline perfected, thanks to Miss Martha, I could start organizing the exhibits in earnest. I loved connecting the learning process with the interesting data I’d collected. But now came the fun part: standing in the museum space and moving things around in my head, figuring out how to communicate that information. When creating a display, I liked to engage as many of the senses as possible. I used recorded music, video, and news clippings, and when I was lucky, I got real artifacts. I loved picking out which facts would make a museum-goer say, “Huh, I’ll probably never get that weird factoid out of my head.”

I hoped that the thrill of seeing their neighbors being interviewed on-screen would help draw in the locals.

I tried several different configurations and traffic patterns, in an effort to evenly distribute points of interest without clustering too many objects in one area of the room. Nothing was worse than standing three deep in a museum and being unable to get close enough to see the exhibit.

A few drafts had to be scrapped because I went a little overboard on the number of flat-panel TV screens I would need. I might need to save some electricity to, say, light or heat the building. The challenge would be highlighting the Lurlene lyrics while giving the other exhibits their share of the attention. And then there was the hamburger-counter thing to deal with. And the possums.

How the hell was I going to deal with the possums? I mean, sure, they were historical artifacts, but I didn’t want to include the words “taxidermically preserved possums” on my brochure. I had never had to deal with this before, not even in Possum Trot, a Kentucky town named for actual possums.

Miss Martha seemed a little worried about me because I had no real social life. While she seemed to enjoy evenings in the parlor with her surrogate cat, she made several tutting noises when she realized that on the one night I was dressing to go out, it wasn’t for drinks with Jenny Lee, but to meet with Miss Earlene to discuss applying for grants from the Bothwell Corporation to repair the library.

In return, Miss Earlene was willing to dig up even more information for me. Apparently some grad student had come through town a few years before and taken oral histories from George McBride, Miss Martha, and Mayor McGlory. I chose not to question why Miss Earlene hadn’t offered me these resources on my first tour through the library. I guess I’d passed some sort of initiation when I didn’t start stealing stuff from special collections the minute I found out the theft sensors had stopped working in 2002.

But the interviews did give me all sorts of ideas for cranny installations, smaller displays set in random locations around the museum, usually in nooks or crannies, where individual visitors could have their own personal experiences reading, listening to, or watching the media selected by the historian. It wasn’t so much filler as quiet little cubbies for those overwhelmed by having other tourists all up in their reminiscing space.

And somewhere in all this, I sought out every possible source of funding for moving the Quonset building. I’d contacted historical societies, music preservation societies, and all the corporate contacts I had left in my bag of tricks. There was no money to be found. Anywhere. And I had used my charming voice on the phone and everything.

As a last-resort, crazy-enough-that-it-just-might-work move, I’d even contacted the administrative offices at ComfyCheeks, but the public relations manager assured me that the company just didn’t do that sort of thing. So I went over her head and contacted the CEO’s office, but the secretary informed me that Mr. Roth didn’t have an open appointment slot until the next month. I made the appointment. I certainly wasn’t going to tell Will about it. Lord knows what sort of letter he would write. He was really good at accurately hurtful correspondence.

And frankly, I didn’t want to get his hopes up, only to fail and leave everyone in town even more discouraged . . . by my actions . . . again.

Ugh.

I would get through this. I would make everything all right. The museum would be a triumph in educational entertainment. And I would find a way to burn Sadie’s doomsday file.

When Miss Martha was tired of worrying over me, she sent her well-armed elected-official niece after me to drag me out to socialize. Since I was not terribly popular with the local girls because I (a) was rumored to be torpedoing the town’s prospects, and (b) was rumored to be Will McBride’s new squeeze, our outings were limited to just Jenny Lee and myself. I think it was more (b) than (a), personally. But it was still fun, Jenny Lee taking me out to Durbin’s, the area’s only running drive-in movie, which was known for its fantastic cheeseburgers and less stellar movie selections. (An Andy Dick double-feature. Shudder.) She also introduced me to mechanical-bull riding at Shooter’s, a country-and-western bar two counties over, where we took a solemn oath that we would never discuss what happens when Bonnie Turkle, “ladies drink free” night, and gyroscopic motion are combined.

The few meals I didn’t share with Miss Martha I ate at the Dinner Bell with Jenny Lee. I suspect she was also behind the sudden miraculous revival of my debit card at Piggly Wiggly. And the fact that I could gas up my car without requiring an act of Congress. I was carving out a tentative, temporary place for myself in Mud Creek. While most of the locals remained ambivalent, if not downright unenthusiastic, toward me, the few people I had made some sort of connection with were quickly becoming the best friends I had outside of Frankfort.

Kelsey took exception to this, but she knew Jenny Lee was armed, so her objections remained on the quiet side of indignity.

After spending most of an afternoon on the phone with yet another potential sponsor, I walked into the foyer to find Miss Martha slinging papers into the enormous canvas tote bag she used as a purse. She wore her usual denim-work-shirt-and-khakis ensemble, but this shirt featured embroidered birdhouses at the shoulders.

I arched my brows, forgetting my sweatiness for a second. Did Miss Martha have a date?

“I left a tuna casserole in the oven for your dinner, honey,” she told me, slicking a layer of raisin-colored lipstick over her mouth. “I have to go to a meeting for the community food pantry. I sit on the board. Of course, Maddie Trinket is the only other person on the board, so we’re just going to sit at the Dinner Bell and natter it out over pie. It’s better than having the meeting at the pantry. Nothing quite as depressing as spending your evening in a closed-down Minit Mart.”

I chuckled. I’d only met the sensibly dressed Miss Trinket once, and it was clear she hadn’t quite made up her mind about me. Miss Martha assured me that it had far more to do with my desire to “dredge up” the town’s sinful musical past than any personal grudge. Mission minded and a self-designated old maid, Maddie would have become a nun if her parents weren’t insistent Baptists, or so Miss Martha claimed. She was firmly antiliquor, antismoking, and anti-music-that-was-anything-but-gospel-written-before-1894. And I just happened to be wearing a Lady Gaga T-shirt when I met her.

There were times when I wondered whether God used me as a sort of personal Tumblr account when he needed a laugh.

“I thought Will said that people around here won’t accept charity,” I said, dropping my bags in their usual spot by the door.

“They won’t. They’re too bullheaded, which is part of the reason I like living here.” Miss Martha sighed, dropping her lipstick into her bag. “But it’s also why we’re going to have a meeting. We have to find a way to get people to use the service. Poor Maddie is tying herself up in knots over it. We keep food for so long that it expires, but we’re afraid of not having anything on hand, just in case the odd person wanders in needing help. The thought of people in my town going hungry because they don’t want to ask for help—I just can’t stand for that, Bonnie.”

I nodded. It could be difficult to make someone accept what they actually needed. But there was no reason for people to be in need when there was help available. I thought back to something Miss Brenda had said about parties and poverty, how it’s hard to be depressed about your state in life when you were together with your friends.

“Miss Martha, I think I have an idea. Would you mind waiting for a second while I clean up for your meeting?”

12

In Which I Enjoy a Nice Plate of Mystery Meat

I never thought I would be so excited that squirrel season, dove season, and deer season were all open at the same time.

The sun set low and burnt-gold over the town square as Will and his friends put out hay bales and picnic tables to mark the dance floor. The weather was cold and crisp, with that smoky autumn scent that spoke of campfires and hay rides. Miss Earlene and her friends from the Ladies Auxiliary had taken the whole fall theme and run with it, using every available corn husk and gourd in three counties to create an autumn wonderland for our festivities.

Somehow, between my obsessive-compulsive planning skills, Miss Martha’s shameless bullying of the town council, and Maddie Trinket’s full-on desperation, we managed to put together the first-ever Mud Creek Burgoo Festival in less than two weeks. The plan was to put together an enormous burgoo from freshly caught deer and other game that I preferred not to think about. People would bring veggies to add to the pot and we would cook it while the crowd played games and danced to a very narrow selection of Maddie-approved country music. It reminded me of that children’s story, Stone Soup. No one family had enough to eat on their own, but when they all put their food in a pot together, there was a warm meal for everybody.

It took Maddie a while to warm up to me at that first pantry board meeting, but eventually I convinced her that people who wouldn’t accept handouts from a food bank would come to a potluck. And if we could get them to accept that, maybe she could introduce the idea that accepting help from the food bank wouldn’t be that different.

Maddie hoped to convince more people to enroll by setting up a raffle for one of Miss Martha’s quilts. On the bottom of the entry forms, there was a tiny checkbox that read “Check here if you are interested in receiving services from the food bank.” Entrants could ask for help without anyone knowing they were asking for help.

In what Miss Martha considered a downright reckless show of optimism, I contacted a college friend who worked in the branding archives at Omnifoods, a corporation that included General Grains Cereal, Happy Tummy Pasta, and Bennett Canned Fruits. The company agreed to donate a pallet of products per month as needed, using it as part of their community outreach program. We used the first delivery to put together some goodie baskets for all of the participating families.

Getting permits and securing the food, tables, decorations, and advertising had been a breeze compared to the hassle of naming the darn thing. Mighty Mayor McBride heard about our plans and volunteered to round up local hunters for our meat portion . . . without actually speaking to me. All communications were routed through Miss Martha, including his request that we call the party a “roadkill cook-off”—because he thought it would draw locals on the quirk factor alone. I didn’t have time to object before both Miss Martha and Maddie smacked the back of his head. Martha wanted to call it a hootenanny. Maddie wanted to call it a “jubilee for Jesus.”

I circumvented them all by turning the ad over to Rosemarie at the Ledger, calling it a Burgoo Festival. I figured it was the least offensive of all the options.

Despite the roadkill connotations, Will was smart to suggest promoting the event as a party. Jeff McDermott, who owned an orchard outside of town, had pressed a huge batch of apple cider. Will, Fred, and Joe Bob had spent the better part of two days butchering the animals the hunters had brought in. What couldn’t be mixed into the stew was barbecued in massive barrel smokers, pumping a delicious barbecue aroma into the air. For the record, smoked squirrel tastes nothing like chicken.

Families showed up in droves to partake in a good old-fashioned burgoo. And there was a line fifteen people deep at the raffle booth, which I took as a hopeful sign. Will was in his element: relaxed, happy, calling out to people as he flipped meat on the smoker. Joe Bob looked like a character from a horror movie, an enormous man lumbering around in a bloodstained apron. But he was smiling, which lessened the scare factor for the kids in attendance.

The Mud Creek Trio had set up on the portable stage, playing Maddie’s approved playlist of Jesus-friendly country-and-western classics. I took a break from being Miss Martha’s general dogsbody to perch on a wooden picnic table and watch a few older couples two-step around the dance floor. A few people waved and called me by name, which warmed my heart a little. I was slowly but surely expanding my social circle beyond Jenny Lee, Miss Martha, and Miss Earlene. (I didn’t count Will as part of that circle, since he spent most of his time antagonizing me.) I wouldn’t say my neighbors were super friendly, but I was no longer getting glared at when I ate at the Dinner Bell.

I liked Mud Creek. I liked the people who lived here, their stubbornness and their spirit. I loved living with Miss Martha and hearing stories about the burlesque ladies she worked with. I liked the friendship I’d developed with Jenny Lee. Hell, there were moments when I liked Will—fleeting, few, and far-between moments.

Will McBride was a good man. He hid it under sarcasm and bluster, and occasionally being an absolute jackass, but he cared about the people around him. He worried about his neighbors and losing the way of life they’d built. He was smart, too smart to be living in a town where he couldn’t hope to have any sort of career beyond what he was doing right now. Heck, the man had saved me from dying in an overturned trailer. If I could get over his trying to torpedo my career, I might actually find him attractive.

I looked over my shoulder to where Will stood drinking beer and grilling with his buddies. He glanced at me and grinned, raising his bottle.

Who was I kidding? I was totally attracted to him. I’d wanted to see Will naked since he was Mr. Roadside Cowboy, helping me unload my burning car. I really needed to get a handle on that. Or get a handle on Will.

Brenda McBride appeared at my left, which was completely inappropriate considering the naked thoughts I was having regarding her son. She was bearing a big paper plate filled with burgoo. “Here you go, hon. Don’t think I didn’t notice you haven’t eaten.” I looked at the stew, grimacing. She rolled her eyes. “You already ate smoked squirrel; how much stranger could this be?”

“I ate smoked squirrel?” I asked her in mock horror. “When did I eat smoked squirrel?”

Burgoo had a strange gamy flavor, a sort of iron-rich brown gravy filled with carrots, onions, and bits of unidentifiable fauna. I tried not to be obvious, but I was chewing super carefully, because I kept waiting to bite into buckshot. I’d met the local dentist, Dr. Calvin, and while he was a perfectly nice man, I didn’t want to end up in his chair.

“There you go,” Brenda said, sitting next to me on my perch. “You girls did a bang-up job putting everything together.”

“Will helped,” I admitted, nodding toward the smokers.

She chuckled. “He loves cooking with fire. All men do. It’s coded into their DNA. So, when does the museum open?”

“My newly acquired sponsors come to visit in a week for a progress report,” I said. “Then after that, about another month, maybe? I should be out of here before Halloween.”

I hadn’t told her or anyone else about my meeting with the ComfyCheeks CEO, which would take place in just a few days. I didn’t like leaving town so close before the sponsors’ visit, but it was my only window to meet with Mr. Roth. I had the information packet I needed to pitch my proposal for ComfyCheeks to pay for the music hall move. Now, all I had to do was travel to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, then wow Roth enough that he would throw buckets of money at me and I could solve all of the town’s problems.

No pressure.

“Well, I know my boy has given you hell over it, but, personally, I can’t wait to see the family history up on the walls. I never could stand scrapbooking, and now it will be like a building-size scrapbook without my having to do any of the work. When it opens, I’ll be there with bells on.”

“I might have you make a little speech before we cut the ribbon, if that’s okay?”

“You know better than to put Will near a mic.” Brenda snorted. “Smart girl. You know, the only C he made at school was in public speaking. He told one of his classmates to ‘eff off’ during a debate on farming subsidies.”

“In the teacher’s defense, you don’t usually hear the f-bomb in a high school debate.”

“He was twenty. He knew better,” she told me.

“He was still in high school when he was twenty?”

“No!” She snickered. “He was a sophomore at University of Kentucky.”

“I didn’t realize Will had graduated from college.”

“He didn’t,” she said, frowning a bit. “When he finally managed to transfer from the community college, it turned out the school absolutely refused to take magic beans as tuition payments.”

“Damned unreasonable of them,” I told her, squeezing her arm.

“Will’s dad had died earlier that year. There was no money. None. Hell, there were two mortgages on the house and another on the hall. Jim had tried some last-ditch attempt to renovate the hall and turn it into some karaoke joint. But that failed too, and keeping the music hall open just wasn’t an option anymore. I know Will doesn’t like it when I say this, but I think Jim just died of a broken heart. It killed him to let that place go. Everything got harder after that. I didn’t want Will to come home, but there was just no money for school. He got a job at the dog food plant and took over his uncle’s business as a side job. We still barely made ends meet. We couldn’t sell the music hall. Nobody in town wanted it. But in the choice between paying the house note and paying the hall loan, we let the hall go into foreclosure.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t blame Will for how he feels about the music hall,” Brenda said. “I just hoped that after all these years he would see the good in the place, too. Maybe you’ll help him with that.” She smiled, slipping her arm around me. “You know, you’re the only girl he’s met in the last ten years who hasn’t just fallen all over herself to impress him. It’s good for his ego.”

“I try.”

“Hey, Ma!” We turned to see Will jogging toward us. “Miss Maddie needs you. Something about emergency copies in the shop office. She says her booth ran out of raffle slips.”

Brenda winked at me and kissed Will’s cheek. “I should get to Maddie before she has a meltdown.”

I smirked at Will, who was swiping his mom’s lipstick off his cheek. “Mr. Mayor.”

“Fancy Pants,” he said, his tone almost civil.

An awkward silence hung between the two of us. After all, the last conversation we’d had involved me telling him to go to hell and his writing a nasty letter about me to the local press. It wasn’t conducive to casual chitchat.

There were things I wanted to say to Will. I was sorry I’d gone behind his back to reach my goals. I was sorry I’d made him think that a building was more important to me than the well-being of his friends and neighbors. I was sorry I’d passed out in his bed with a head injury. But I kept my mouth shut, because if I said one of those things, I would say them all and then some. And there was no better way to ruin my already tenuous hold on dignity than sad-girl, nonintoxicated word vomit.

“This turned out pretty nicely,” Will said, nodding toward the general splendor. “I know I haven’t really thanked you for anything you’ve done since you showed up, which is not an accident. But I really appreciate the work you put into this.”

“But just this?” I clarified.

“Well, it shows that you really care about the people here, not just getting your way,” he said carefully. “And I can see the good in that.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, staying silent, which seemed to make Will nervous. He asked, “What?”

“Just waiting for the other shoe to drop. You’re going to follow up with some sort of insult the moment I relax, I just know it.”

He sighed, rolling his eyes. “You wound me.”

“Not yet.”

The trio played the opening strains of “I Will Always Love You,” the good old-fashioned Dolly Parton version, made even more twangy by school superintendent Jack Smallman’s flinty tenor.

“Come on,” Will sighed, stretching his hand toward mine. “Let’s cut a rug. To make up for those dropped shoes.”

Before I could say no, he took my hand in his and led me to the blacktop dance floor. His fingers were warm and solid around mine. There was an awkward moment when I wasn’t sure where to put my hands. I hadn’t slow danced with anyone since high school. I just didn’t go to the sort of places that involved standing in one place and swaying. Will had no such problems, confidently pulling me into his arms and holding my right hand at the proper eye level.

He smelled so good, which was sort of weird when you consider how he’d spent the last few days. His red-plaid shirt was washed to softness against my palm. I wanted to lay my head there, to rub the fabric against my cheek. I could feel his breath feathering over my forehead and the warm assurance of his hand against the small of my back. My nipples tingled as he pressed me to his chest.

That was new.

“This is a good song,” I said absently, to take my mind off the whole nipple thing.

“I’ve never cared much for it,” he said.

I snickered. “You prefer the Bodyguard version?”

“No, it’s a song about leaving somebody. It’s a song about heartbreak for no good reason. It’s about pointless pain.”

The hurt and weight in his voice had my throat tightening up. Will knew a lot more about pain than I had given him credit for. Losing time with his dad, losing his chance to go to college. No wonder he seemed so bitter about the music hall. You didn’t just get over stuff like that. And here I was, dredging up all of those feelings every time I talked to him. I sucked as a human being.

So, of course, I had to crack a joke before I actually passed out as a result of emotional awkwardness. “Well, that’s way more philosophical than I usually get about songs I remember fondly from middle school dances.”

“Clearly you’ve never sat on the front porch with your buddies analyzing country songs over beers.”

“Not often, no.”

“We’ve been getting along pretty well lately,” he said. “Is it weird that I sort of miss arguing with you?”

“Not nearly as weird as the rumors that we’re engaged to be engaged. I thought you said you would have Fred’s wife do damage control.”

“She has,” he swore.

“And yet every time I go to the grocery store, Livvy Macon looks like she’s about to come after me with a box cutter.”

“You can’t control what people flap their gums over. It’s just gossip. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Well, I’m more sorry for you. It must be very frustrating to have those things being said about you with someone you don’t even like.”

He nudged me away a bit so I would be sure to see his face. “I never said that.”

“I am reasonably sure that you’ve said you don’t like me in several different ways.”

“No, I said that you’re frustrating and bossy and a complete pain in the ass to whoever is unfortunate enough to be on the wrong end of an argument with you,” he said. “I get you, I do. You see the world as this big museum and you’re runnin’ around tryin’ to make sure everybody can see it the way you do, to recognize that something was important or used to be beautiful. It’s nice that you try so hard to make sure everybody gets a little glimpse of that. But not everything is meant to be saved.”

“I have no idea how to respond to that,” I told him.

The corner of his mouth lifted. After another long silent moment, he added, “Now is the time most people would say something along the lines of ‘I like you, too’ or ‘I don’t dislike you, either.’”

“I’m not most people.”

“Trust me, I know that,” he muttered. “Come on, we have to find some common ground. There has to be something you like about me.”

“You have very nice teeth,” I offered, making his smile spread even farther.

“My teeth?”

“Good dental hygiene is very important to me.”

“Well, that’s something, at least,” he added, his optimistic tone a little off-putting.

I opened my mouth to attempt to say something witty and gracious, but all that came out was a squeak as Joe Bob snuck up behind me and declared that Will was hogging me and he was cutting in. As Joe Bob swept me across the floor, Will gave a hapless little wave.

And then, an elderly lady from the quilting society asked Will to dance. I took a few turns around the floor with the local fellas, Joe Bob, Fred, and Jordan Tompkins, an eight-year-old who thought I looked like Snow White. Eventually, Will and I lost track of each other as the dance floor filled up. I was about to plead blisters when an older African-American man with a broad white smile claimed a two-step.

“So I hear you’ve been spending a lot of time at the library with my sister,” he said as he led me in a wide circle.

“Mayor McGlory! I’m so glad you’re feeling better,” I said.

“Ah, former Mayor McGlory, thank you very much. The dang doctor just now took me off house arrest,” he muttered. “And don’t tell Will I said this, but I am glad he took the job over. I was getting too old for it.”

“You don’t look a day over forty,” I promised him.

He chuckled, shaking his salt-and-pepper head. “Oh, I like you. You’re a terrible liar, but I like you anyway.”

I amended, “Maybe forty-five.”

“Now you’re just being a smart aleck,” he chided. “So, I hear the library is getting some check the size of a barn door that’s going to pay for renovations?”

“She’s going to pick up the novelty check in Frankfort next week.” I nodded, thinking of the none-too-subtle check presentation Sadie had arranged with the people at Bothwell the previous morning. Bothwell was giving Miss Earlene three hundred thousand dollars, starting with a one-hundred-thousand-dollar initial payment. Miss Earlene was going to wear her good pink church suit and let Fred drive her all the way to the state capital for her photo op. Since a good number of my prefabbed exhibit structures were being delivered that morning, I wasn’t able to go with her.

“I know she appreciates your help with the paperwork.”

“Miss Earlene has been a big help to me, so I wanted to repay her by helping her with the application process.”

“Well, that would mean a lot to Lurlene, seeing it all fixed up before she retires.”

I nodded. “I hope it works out— Wait, what did you call her?”

“Lurlene. Lil’ Earlene,” he said, his eyebrows arched at my sharp tone. “It’s been a pet name for her, ever since I was little.”

“She was Lurlene?” I asked, dumbfounded, as we slid to a halt in the middle of the dance floor.

“Yeah, she was Lurlene. I was Tom-Tom,” he said, pulling away from me slightly, as if my crazy was catching.

“She was Lurlene?” I repeated.

The elderly former mayor froze as I threw my arms around him and squealed like I’d just won the lottery. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou!”

As I scampered away in search of Miss Earlene, I heard Mr. McGlory mutter, “Strange girl.”

How could one little old woman give me the slip so easily when she didn’t even know I was looking for her? Heck, Miss Earlene was supposed to drive me home, but everyone I talked to had a different story. She was at the root beer booth. She was calling numbers at bingo. She was organizing the raffle slips, which, for some reason, the committee didn’t want me to see. I guessed because I was still an outsider and I shouldn’t see which families wanted to use the food bank services.

In my search of every nook and cranny of the town square, I could not pin down my wily geriatric prey. I was sitting in the parking lot of the Dinner Bell, doubting my own sleuthing skills, when Will pulled up in his truck and yelled out the window, “Hey, Miss Earlene asked me to give you a ride.”

I jogged toward the truck, mildly amused when Will reached across the cab to shove the door open for me. Chivalry was alive and well in Mud Creek.

“Congratulations on tracking her down,” I grumbled. “I haven’t seen her in hours.”

He turned toward Miss Martha’s house, carefully weaving his truck through the post-party traffic. “She’s been a busy little bee. She and Miss Martha are overwhelmed with those little info slips. They’re already holed up at the library creating spreadsheets.”

“The library!” I cried, like a recently thwarted Seinfeld. Will shot me an incredulous look. “I had something I needed to talk to her about.”

“Does she owe you money? A kidney?”

“Information,” I said.

“You’d think she would know by now how seriously you take your information.”

“You’d think so.” I sighed, leaning my head against the window.

“You did good tonight,” he told me.

I nodded, closing my eyes as he reached across the seat and lightly patted my hand. I smiled, knowing that if I opened my eyes, I would see him grinning at me through the milky green light from his dashboard. We rode the rest of the short drive in pleasant silence, and I’d almost drifted off by the time Will pulled to a stop in front of Miss Martha’s.

I blinked blearily up at the old house, shaking myself awake. Will squeezed my hand. “You know, I could just keep driving, take you to my place. Have a beer.”

My eyebrow quirked. “I think we both know that more than beer would be involved.”

Will gave me his most boyish and winsome smile. “If you insist.”

I rolled my eyes, leaning forward to give Will a peck on the cheek. He turned his head at the last minute and caught my lips with his. He made a soft growling noise into my mouth as I threaded my fingers through his short sandy hair. It bordered on a purr when I gave his scalp a tickling scratch. Somehow I ended up straddling his lap, butt pressed up against the steering wheel.

I will not have sex in Will’s truck. I will not have sex in Will’s truck. I will not have sex in Will’s truck.

If someone didn’t stop me, I was going to have sex in Will’s truck.

Easing back from him, I gave Will one last kiss on the tip of his nose. “Good night.”

“Good night,” he said with a sigh, eyes still closed. I climbed off his lap and scooted across the bench seat. “Wait, what— Good night?”

“Good night,” I said again, waving as I opened the truck door and slammed it behind me. “See you around.”

“You’re a cold woman, Bonnie Turkle,” he called after me.

“But you’ll respect me a lot more in the morning,” I called back.

“I’ll be taking cold showers till morning!”

13

In Which I Confront a Previously Unknown Musical Icon

Miss Earlene stood at the circulation desk, arms crossed, staring at the blueprints for the planned renovations and the giant cardboard Bothwell Foundation check for one hundred thousand dollars.

“You know, I always thought that those overblown novelty checks were tacky,” she said, pursing her lips. “But I’m thinking about taking this one home with me and snuggling up with it at night like a security blanket.”

I stared at Miss Earlene, this woman I’d spent weeks with, and tried to imagine her as a young, carefree girl spending her nights at McBride’s in the arms of a passionate young musician. I tried to imagine her without wrinkles or worry lines, the gray in her hair, or the bifocals that hung from her neck on a long silver chain. Miss Earlene in a pretty pink dancing dress and matching shoes.

I couldn’t see it.

“Bonnie, honey. You’re staring at me,” she said, swiping at her cheeks. “Do I have something on my face?”

“You were Lurlene.” It was both a question and a statement. An expression of the bewilderment I’d felt since Tommy McGlory dropped his clue-bomb on my head.

Miss Earlene hesitated, as if she was going to play it off as a silly nickname or deny it altogether. I looked her right in the eyes and squinted really hard. Because that’s about as threatening as my expressions got.

She sighed. “Technically, I was Earlene McGlory Jr. My mama was Big Earlene. I was Little Earlene.”

I gestured impatiently for her to continue.

“My mother, she wasn’t well,” Earlene said carefully. “Now we know that she was mentally ill, probably something like manic depression or bipolar disorder. Back then, if we ever talked about it, we just said she was high-strung or ‘not quite right.’ She would go months where she was fine. She had steady work, cleaning for some families in town. And then she’d have spells where I couldn’t get her out of bed for days. When she had those spells, it was up to me to take care of Tommy, to keep the bills paid up and the house running.

“When it got really bad, I was only ten or so myself, but I understood what had to be done and I did it. I wasn’t a normal girl. I was never frivolous or silly, because I didn’t have the time. For years, I was constantly juggling—the house, school, Tommy, trying to earn whatever I could sewing or tutoring the other kids from school—and if I let one of those balls drop, everything would fall apart. On her good days, my mother used to tease me about being her serious little bookworm, and it made me want to scream. Why did she think I was so serious? Why did she think I worked so hard? Because I couldn’t trust her to take care of us. The first time I really did anything just for myself was going to McBride’s on Teen Night. I didn’t even have any friends to sit with. The girls at school had given up on me a long time before. But I could sit up there in the balcony with the rest of the black folks and listen to the music. I could watch the couples dancing and feel like I was a part of it all. I went every two weeks, leaving Tommy with a neighbor lady. It was my time to myself, my time to be a normal girl. And one night when I was seventeen, Louis Gray came to play at McBride’s. You know those old movies, when two people spot each other across a crowded room and everything stands still? That was what it was like for us. He saw me from the stage and everything just seemed to grind to a halt. I couldn’t help but fall head over heels for him.

“Louis was a Yankee. He never could understand Southern accents, the way we strung all our words together. When we said ‘Lil’ Earlene,’ he heard ‘Lurlene.’ So it became a sort of pet name between the two of us. Tommy heard him use it once. We weren’t very careful one afternoon and Tommy saw us together. I introduced Louis as a friend from town. He was so sweet to my baby brother. I still had stars in my eyes and I thought that meant he’d be a good daddy when we started having kids of our own. Of course, that didn’t work out like I’d hoped. Anyway, Tommy picked up on the nickname and used it after Louis left.”

Miss Earlene plunked down in one of the reading chairs. “Louis wasn’t a big draw back then. He was really green. His band could keep a hell of a beat, but Louis couldn’t play to save his life. The label asked George to let Louis train up for a while, opening for other acts. He sulked about it, but he got a little better. And when he was sulking, a certain young lady used to bring him a Coke and tell him, ever so gently, to get over it.” She grinned triumphantly and pulled a photo out of the album.

“Get over it?” I laughed, looking down at a picture of a young Louis grinning at the camera, a pretty young girl pressed to his side.

“In more proper sixties language,” she assured me.

“Do you ever wish you’d gone with him?”

“I couldn’t leave Tommy alone with Mama,” she said. “I knew I did the right thing when I heard him sing that song. I’d broken his heart, but I gave him his voice. Somehow, he became a better musician because of what we had. How many people can say they were somebody’s muse? You know, I’ve never talked to anyone about this. I’m glad it was you who figured it out.”

I grinned at her, trying to wipe away the moisture gathering at the corners of my eyes. She patted my hand. “And who knows what could have happened? Maybe he never would have had the success he had without that silly song. Maybe we would have slowed down, gotten married, had a few kids. And maybe he would have started to resent me. Or hell, maybe he would have kept on touring and I could have been on the bus with him when it crashed and died myself. Louis wouldn’t have wanted that. There are a lot of maybes in life, honey, and if you let them haunt you, you’ll never have a life at all. I had a good life.”

“But you never found anyone else.”

She scoffed. “I didn’t want to. I’d had my happiness, which is more than some folks can say. And it’s more romantic this way, don’t you think? A fine gothic romance immortalized in song. And I’ve been able to watch Tommy grow up, have his family. I have more than enough honorary grandbabies to knit for. I never spend a holiday alone. I want for nothing.”

And suddenly, I was kicking myself in the butt for not recording this conversation.

“Is there a reason you never told anyone else about this?” I asked her.

“It was nobody’s business but mine,” she said. “And what sort of person would run around town screaming ‘It was me! It was me! I stomped Louis Gray’s little heart into dust!’ Not exactly the image of a responsible young librarian.”

“What about a responsible, mysterious, older librarian who owes me a favor?”

Miss Earlene narrowed her rheumy brown eyes at me. “What are you getting at, Bonnie?”

“Would you let me interview you?”

My Louis Gray display had taken a dramatic turn. With a video display looping Miss Earlene’s interview placed behind the Lucite shadow box framing the lyrics, it was a centerpiece of the museum. Miss Earlene hadn’t been excited about “coming out” as Lurlene, but she was cooperative, sharing sweet little details of her first flirtations with Louis. Theirs had been a fairly innocent romance, in terms of torrid musical love affairs. The day after he’d noticed Earlene at the music hall, he’d found out her address and brought daisies to her front door. They shared sweet, secret conversations on Earlene’s back porch in the hours before her mother returned home from work.

They’d had to hide their relationship from Big Earlene, who had downright puritanical standards when it came to her only daughter, because if Miss Earlene had a life, that meant no one would be around to keep the family afloat. Big Earlene would have gone ballistic at the thought of her daughter “whoring around” and forbidden her from seeing Louis again. At the very least, Miss Earlene was afraid her mother would have some sort of episode that would scare Louis away.

Keeping the relationship secret from Earlene’s mother meant keeping it secret from most of the people in town. The McBrides and Louis’s bandmates were aware of the amount of time they were spending together, but few others were. While shooting the interview, Miss Earlene dressed in that good pink church suit while sitting in one of the prettier corners of the library. The more questions I asked, the more Miss Earlene relaxed and the more stories she shared. Eventually, she began to enjoy the idea of her neighbors seeing this new Brontë-esque side of her.

As for my own sad love life, Will hadn’t had time to follow up on his “cold shower” comments, as he’d had to travel to a Kentucky League of Cities meeting in Louisville the following day. It was his first official act as mayor outside the town. Will had played it off as no big deal, but Brenda said he was pretty nervous about hobnobbing with city officials from other cities across Kentucky. He even packed his neckties, both of them.

I felt bad for Will, all alone in the big city, not really wanting to be so far from home. The first night he arrived at the Galt House Hotel, I was getting ready for bed and sent him a friendly You’ll be fine text, hoping that one, he wasn’t in possession of some giant Zack Morris phone that predated texting, and two, he wasn’t entertaining some cocktail waitress in his room. He texted back almost immediately, Should have let McGlory come. They have those portable chest shocker things now. He would have been okay.

I slid between my crisp white sheets, giggling as I texted back, That’s so wrong.

I plugged my phone into the charger and it immediately beeped. But you laughed. I can tell.

I laugh at cat videos on the Internet. Doesn’t mean they’re funny.

I appreciated the fact that he wasn’t using stupid abbreviated text-speak. At least he liked me enough to spell out full words. He wasn’t rushing through with emoticons and LMFAOs. But as much as I wanted to continue the conversation, I didn’t want to be the one to stretch it out. So I fluffed my pillow, wondering how the heck Miss Martha managed to get the sheets to smell like summers at my Gam-Gam’s house. My phone beeped from my nightstand. Shouldn’t you be in bed by now?

I smirked as I texted back. Who said I wasn’t?

There was a long pause before I received, That’s mean.

And then there was an even longer pause before I got, So what are you wearing?

I snorted. Really? “What are you wearing?” Too easy. It’s beneath you, Will.

Doesn’t mean I don’t want to know.

I was using my personal phone, but somehow I didn’t think sexting with the very public official who was set against my plans for the music hall was the best idea. So I ignored the question.

You not replying is giving me all kinds of leeway, imagination-wise, he texted a few seconds later. And that’s kind of evil.

I glanced down at my purple flannel pajama pants printed with Grateful Dead bears. They’d been washed so many times that the fabric was paper thin and soft as water. A teddy. Purple. I texted back.

I had time to read four pages before he texted back, Evil.

For the next few nights, the texting continued. Most of our discussions did not revolve around my pajamas. At first it was short little updates on what was happening in our respective locations. He wrote, Mayor from Belleville got kicked out of an Arby’s last night in a dispute over a Beef ’n Cheddar. I shot back, Sissie McNabb found Sammy in the arms of Carrie Ann Fuller at the Bowl-A-Rama. The automatic ball cleaner was put to creative, horrific use. And then he moved on to lament not being able to find Ale-8-One, a regional ginger ale specific to eastern Kentucky, as he tended to get cranky if he got overcaffeinated. And the last thing he needed was to get cranky while he schmoozed with city officials. So I told him about a gas station near his hotel that I knew carried Ale-8-One.

And when I couldn’t find anything to watch at midnight while I was finishing up copy for the engravers who would etch the plastic information tablets, Will recommended Dr. Mysterio’s All-Night Fright Fest on the local Fox affiliate. Dr. Mysterio was a local radio DJ with a penchant for awful monster movies from the 1950s. That night’s selection, The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy, was one of Will’s personal favorites, so he made valiant attempts to defend it, but it was still horrible.

It was a little strange that he didn’t call, but I sort of enjoyed the filter texting provided. I didn’t get embarrassed by the slight naughtiness and blabber out whatever verbal pyrotechnics came bubbling up. And I missed him. It was absolutely bizarre that I missed seeing someone who had teased me, berated me, and tattled on me to my boss. Not seeing him every day was sort of weird. It was like I missed the arguing, which was clearly a sign that I needed a new hobby or an ant farm or something.

The benefit of Will being gone was that I had time to get the museum ready for the sponsors’ visit and prep for my trip to Cedar Rapids. While the museum wasn’t entirely ready for public viewing, the renovations were complete, the display sets were going up, and the “Lurlene, Lurlene” exhibit was perfect. I was sure that alone would sell the sponsors.

And if it didn’t, I would talk in circles until they relented.

Joe Bob’s car just barely made it to the Walter County Regional Airport, and frankly, it felt like a waste to leave it in the paid parking lot. But I didn’t want to explain to Miss Martha or Jenny Lee what I was doing in Cedar Rapids. I’d told them I had a meeting with Sadie and Kelsey in Frankfort to take care of some last-minute details before the sponsor meeting.

I wheeled my little carry-on bag behind me, praying that I’d remembered all of the handouts and pictures and everything I would need to impress Mr. Roth. I’d also packed both a push-up bra and the red polka-dotted dress Kelsey called my “impressionable convent school teacher” outfit. Because you never knew.

I cleared security in less than ten minutes, because it was Walter County. There was one gate and I was one of five people on the flight to Nashville, which connected to another flight to Chicago, which connected to Cedar Rapids. And then I would do it all over again within twenty-four hours, so I could make it back in time for the sponsor visit on Saturday. It was the only day they could all make time in their schedules.

There was no bar in the airport, no Starbucks from which to get my fortifying preflight latte. Eventually the gate agent/security guard/luggage loader would call our flight and we’d walk out to the plane. I took out my phone and saw that I had a text from Will. I’ve been thinking about you a lot.

I grinned and typed back. Clearly.

I’ve been thinking about where we left off the night of the party. Finishing what we started.

I giggled. And before I could think it through, I was typing back. It’s negotiable.

So, I’ll see you tmrw when I get home, right?

Wow, he must be eager to spell “tomorrow” like that. Not for another few days, I told him. I’m on my way out of town now.

I didn’t know you could fit a Nooooooooooooo that long on a phone screen.

I hovered in the gray-carpeted hallway, watching the clock as the whopping fifteen-minute window Mr. Roth had scheduled for our meeting ticked by and closed.

This was such a bad idea, I told myself as I waited in Mr. Roth’s sleek, minimalist waiting area with its massive black-and-white art featuring boxers and briefs. If by some miracle I did manage to get into Roth’s office, there was no way he was going to listen to me. I should slink out of the building with my dignity intact before I got arrested for annoying a millionaire.

I almost left. My feet were actually pointed toward the elevator. But then I thought of Will. And Miss Martha, Jenny Lee, Miss Earlene, Fred, Joe Bob, and every other person in Mud Creek I’d be failing if I ran away. Will wouldn’t run away. Will would have charmed the secretary out of her panties and kicked Mr. Roth’s door in by now. I could do that. I should do that.

Except for the panty thing.

I turned back toward Mr. Roth’s office, squaring my shoulders and preparing to march across the waiting room and beat on the door. Just then, the door opened and a thin, harried-looking man in an expensive navy suit fumbled several files as he walked out of Mr. Roth’s office. I heard a brash bass voice growl, “Just get it done!” as the thinner man gathered up his papers.

Right.

I dashed across the waiting room as quickly as I could clip in my little black kitten heels. As the secretary yelled “Hey, stop!” I sidestepped the man in the navy suit, nudging him out of harm’s way as I slammed the office door behind me.

James Roth was a stocky, rough man in an expensive gray silk suit. Sitting behind his huge dark walnut desk, he looked more like a gangster in an old black-and-white movie than a man-panty salesman.

I definitely would not call him a man-panty salesman to his face.

“Young lady, do I need to call security?” he asked.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” I said. “I’m Bonnie Turkle. I work as a historian for the Kentucky Commission on Tourism and I’m opening a museum in Mud Creek in McBride’s Music Hall. We had an appointment ten minutes ago.”

He glanced at what looked like a big appointment book on his desk blotter. “You told my secretary you worked for the National Cotton Council.”

“I lied,” I admitted, wincing.

Mr. Roth frowned. “Then I’m afraid you’re wasting not only your time, but mine. Contract discussions with the city have been suspended indefinitely because of an impasse, if I recall correctly, caused by your interference. For you to come here to try to renegotiate—”

“No, no one sent me. No one from Mud Creek even knows I’m here. In fact, I’m pretty sure they would be pissed if they knew I was,” I told him, pulling my file folder out of my bag.

He sat back in his chair, folding his hands over his belly. “So why should I even speak to you?”

“Because I have good intentions?” I suggested.

He gave me a long, hard stare.

I knew that wouldn’t work.

“Okay, you should listen to me because I know a way to make all parties in our bizarre little hierarchy of needs happy. But it’s going to take a little extra give from your side of the table,” I said. Mr. Roth made a face I could only describe as cautiously intrigued as he motioned me into a chair.

Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out why I was talking like a character from a Martin Scorsese movie. Darn Mr. Roth and his gangster vibe! I could only hope to get out of this without quoting Scarface.

I explained my proposition and the potential benefit of moving the museum to another location—being able to open the museum and the plant, making local residents, ComfyCheeks shareholders, and music lovers everywhere happy. I managed to modulate my mafia tone, focusing on facts and figures and pictures from my information packet.

“According to my estimates, all I’ll need is three hundred thousand dollars to dismantle the museum and move the building and its contents to another location.”

Mr. Roth did some scribbling on a legal pad on his massive desk. He frowned. “It won’t cost that much to move a building.”

“Well, we also have to buy the lot,” I added, laughing uncomfortably. Mr. Roth was not amused.

“Look, we don’t have that kind of money to just throw around, especially when there are dozens of little towns where we could build a factory. Without the public relations hassles.”

“But not with the kind of direct railroad and highway access that Mud Creek offers. And not with a readily available, easily trained workforce. And if you build in Mud Creek, you wouldn’t just be saving a very grateful town with much-needed jobs. You would be saving a town while preserving a much-beloved piece of that town’s history. That shows integrity. It shows heart. You wouldn’t just be a CEO of an undergarment manufacturer, you would be a philanthropist.” His eyebrows perked up at that, so I added, “An ambassador of goodwill to a town full of people who desperately need you.” He seemed even more pleased. “A statesman. You would be ComfyCheeks, the underwear that cares.”

He arched an eyebrow.

“Was that laying it on too thick?” I asked. He nodded. “Dang it.”

“That’s all right. I can appreciate a hard sell. I spend a disturbing amount of time selling grown men on the idea that their wives want to see them wearing glorified bicycle shorts.”

“So really, convincing your board of directors to make a teeny little donation, which hardly amounts to a third of one percent of your annual profit, won’t be that hard for you.”

His thick lips twitched. “A third of one percent, huh?”

I shrugged. “I do my homework.”

“Well, I admire that in someone who forces a proposal on me.” He reached across his desk to shake my hand. “You’ve got a deal, Miss Turkle. Depending, of course, on the full agreement of the town council.”

“I promise you that won’t be a problem.”

I spent the rest of Thursday and the better part of Friday with ComfyCheeks’ legal and marketing departments, hashing out what we would need for the transport and transfer of property, discussing how to spin this situation. Mr. Hunnam, ComfyCheeks’ resident real estate genius, already had several feelers out in Mud Creek for locally available commercial lots. He was able to quickly, quietly purchase the lot just a few hundred yards away from the music hall’s original location. The relocated museum would be placed just outside the ComfyCheeks plant’s gates, standing across the highway on a lot that used to belong to a farming family named Wilkes.

Mr. Roth and I agreed to keep the arrangement quiet for a few days, at least until after my first progress report with my sponsors. It felt wrong to make an announcement regarding a large, generous donation from a new sponsor when the companies that helped launch the project hadn’t yet received credit for their part. And knowing how the grapevine worked in Mud Creek, I knew I wouldn’t even be able to tell Will about it. But as soon as everything was official, Mr. Roth could make a big splashy announcement.

I didn’t want to toot my own horn, but I’d done it. I’d saved the town. All the problems I had inadvertently created would be solved. The plant would be built. The people in Mud Creek would have jobs. The museum could open. The town’s economic prospects would improve. Will would no longer be the mayor of a dying town. He would be mayor of a going concern . . . which he probably wouldn’t want to leave for some time, which would feel weird when I moved away.

Which I would think about later.

With a promise from Mr. Roth to courier the appropriate paperwork to Mud Creek as soon as his lawyers could prepare it, I hopped an afternoon flight home. I picked up my cell so many times to call Will with the news, but I knew it was better to wait. I wanted to be able to share this with him in person, when the time was right. So instead, I called Sadie in an attempt to remind her that I was an employable, competent person.

“This is great news,” Sadie told me. “Congratulations, Bonnie. You really pulled your butt out of the fire on this one. And mine, too. Those calls from the governor’s PR office were getting more and more ‘pointed.’”

“Well, I’m sorry your buttocks were near the fire in the first place.”

“Eh, it’s nothing worse than . . . okay, it was worse than most of the things I’ve done. But if I add all of those things together at once . . .”

“Sadie, please stop trying to make me feel better.”

Sadie snickered. “Okay, okay, but when you get back, we need to have a serious talk about your position.” Just then, the ticket agent at the nearest counter chose to make a loud, slurring announcement that sounded like instructions from one of Charlie Brown’s teachers. I barely made out Sadie saying “going to have to make some changes.” I plugged a finger into one ear and shouted, “Sadie? What do you mean, ‘a serious talk’?”

“For right now, enjoy your win. Congratulations.”

“Sadie?”

Sadie’s reply was muted by another outburst from the Peanuts gallery.

“Okay?” Sadie called into the phone. “We’ll talk when you get back.”

And with that, she hung up. I blinked at my phone. What did she mean? A serious talk sounded ominous. Serious talks usually didn’t involve compliments on a job well done. Her tone hadn’t been upset, but Sadie was too good at spin control to give any hint of her intentions to fire me. But had the resolution of my problems in Mud Creek given Sadie the closure she needed to get rid of me?

I sat through three flights and two layovers, twitching the entire time, annoying all the passengers around me. Somehow, I just didn’t care.

14

In Which I Fall Into a Sex Booby Trap . . . Which Sounds Redundant

I beat on the door of Will’s cute little ranch house, practically vibrating with excitement. I hadn’t even stopped at Miss Martha’s to drop off my bags, just drove straight to Will’s from the airport. It was pouring as I ran toward the door, my shoulder bag held over my head. Will answered the door in ratty jeans and an old University of Kentucky T-shirt. His feet were bare and surprisingly pretty for a man.

“I am so glad to see you,” I said, breathlessly.

“So am I.” Will’s face was more unsettled than mine. “You too, I mean.”

I glanced down, following his sight line, to see that my perfectly respectable pink-checked “comfortable enough to fly in” shirt was now transparent, allowing full view of the “crazy cherries”-print bra that Kelsey bought me for my birthday. Heat flushed my face, and suddenly a few of the texts Will and I had been exchanging came to mind. I looked up to find Will staring at my mouth. I raised my hands to my cheeks to try to cool them, but he pulled them away from my face, dragging me against him.

His mouth closed over mine, and it felt like my entire body had been zapped. I made an embarrassing little squeak as his hands slipped around my waist and pulled me into the house. His mouth tasted like ginger ale and cherry popsicles. He closed the door and pushed me against it, wrapping one of my legs around his waist. I yanked at his sweatshirt, pulling it over his head and mussing his hair.

“What are we doing?” I asked.

He murmured against my lips, “Something stupid.”

“Well, as long as we’re on the same page.”

Will peeled off my wet shirt and slipped his hand to the small of my back, rubbing his thumb along my spine. His hands felt warm and heavy against my skin, like an anchor, keeping me tethered to him in the best possible way. I wanted to breathe him in, memorize the texture of his hair through my fingers, the Dial soap smell of his skin, the way his mouth moved against mine.

I kissed my way down his chest to his belly, nipping at the skin just below his navel. The thick ropes of my wet hair trailed over his ribs and he yelped. “Your hair is so cold!”

I giggled, kissing his little chin divot. “Poor baby.”

He laughed softly, hauling me up to eye level so he could kiss me again as we bumped along the hallway to his room. I gave him a gentle shove back onto the bed, then worked his jeans open with shaking fingers, dragging them down his hips to reveal white ComfyCheeks briefs.

I had to tell him. I had to tell him right now, before his penis got involved and I got too confused to tease him about wearing ComfyCheeks man-panties.

ComfyCheeks.

Right. Darn it.

“Will, I need to tell you—” I opened my mouth, only to have Will drag me down and cover it with his own.

“No, really.” I sighed against his mouth as my hands dragged his briefs to his knees.

He nibbled his way down my throat and pressed his teeth firmly against the skin over my collarbone, leaving a definite mark.

What was I thinking again? Because I was having a very difficult time remembering what had been so urgent just a few seconds ago.

I settled my hips over his, relishing the way my cool skin felt against his heat, even as he slipped on a condom. I tried to look away, suddenly shy now that the big moment was at hand. But he tilted my face and held my gaze as I sank down on him, shuddering at the sensation of my body being stretched from the inside out. He groaned, pulling me tight against him, begging me not to move for just a second.

I had to distract myself somehow, pull focus for the both of us before—

“Mr. Roth approved the sponsorship!” I blurted out as he reached up to kiss me. He recoiled, his eyes wide. “The company bought the lot across the street and they’re going to move the building as soon as possible. They’re going to resume negotiations as soon as you answer their calls! They’re going to build the factory here.”

“Really?” he panted, biting his lip as he seemed to debate between celebrating and concentrating on his current activities. I nodded. He blew out a quick breath. “That’s awesome. And we will definitely talk about that. Later.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

I sat up just the tiniest bit before snapping my hips down as he groaned. “Much, much later.”

I found my rhythm, up and down, up and down, like a very naughty girl on a carousel. I yelped as he bumped against a super-sensitive spot inside of me. He grinned, extraordinarily pleased with himself, and did it over and over again. Sitting up, he slid his hand along my cheek as he gently bit down on my bottom lip. He shifted me in his lap, pulling my thighs on either side of his hips.

Now that I could admit that I’d put serious thought into how Will would be in bed, I could say that this was not expected. I’d expected a wham or a bam, or at least a strange position involving balancing my butt on the nightstand. I hadn’t expected the intimate nuzzling, the smiles, or the soft touches. But, for my part, I’d never been like this in bed. The guys I’d dated before were either so nervous that they needed constant direction or so worried about being too forceful that they couldn’t be there in the moment.

His smile was positively naughty as I swooped down and attacked his mouth. I bit his lips, the curve of his chin.

“Ow!” he exclaimed.

“Sorry!” I cried.

“No, that was—” he surged forward, our teeth clacking together as he moved under me. I cried out as he thrust up. My hands scrabbled over his shoulders, clutching at the shreds of his shirt. His tongue moved inside my mouth, mimicking the movement between my legs.

From there, it became a bit of a tussle, a race to see who could make the other cry uncle. Or any number of sexier, less familial babbles. Achilles’ heels were discovered and exploited as we nibbled, tickled, bit, and bucked. And when he rubbed his thumb just so across that place and sank his teeth into my neck, I descended into senseless shouts, taking him right down with me. There was a little stream of sweat dripping down his neck and I wanted to lick it off. I did lick it off.

A terrible pressure built between my thighs, coiling up my belly. It pulsed and grew, fluttering like some living thing with a will of its own. My whole body seemed to tense and then shatter. I howled with it, ripping at Will’s back with my nails.

I collapsed against him, butting my forehead against his and nearly knocking him down.

“Are you always that loud?” he marveled.

“No.” I clapped my hand over my mouth and snickered as he rearranged us so that I was lying on my side, his arms curled around me. Between the rush of blood away from my brain and the multiple flights, I could feel exhaustion dragging my body closer to sleep. I snuggled into sheets that smelled like Will. My heavy eyelids slid closed and his face nuzzled against the nape of my neck. I yawned, contented, and gave in to the urge to slip away.

I woke up with misty gray light filtering through Will’s windows. The warm weight of his arm around my middle was heaven. I couldn’t remember a morning when I’d woken up more comfortable or content.

By He-Man’s furry briefs, I’d slept with Will McBride.

What had I done?

I was not a one-nighter sort of person. I was a three-dates-before-sex person. I was a relationship person. And sleeping with Will certainly didn’t mean any sort of commitment.

Plus, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept in the same bed with someone. My last boyfriend, Kyle, had “space issues” and couldn’t stand sharing his bed. Even if he slept over, he would get up about an hour after I drifted off and go sleep on my couch. And this was someone I had a semi-official relationship with. (It turned out his commitment issues ran deeper than not being able to remain in one room over the course of the night.)

Will was so pretty when he was asleep. Obviously he was attractive—if a little annoying—when he was awake, but when his eyes were closed and his mouth was relaxed, he was practically a Raphaelite angel, all smooth lines and gentle curves. I wanted to run my fingertips over his cheeks, down his nose, to plant my thumb in the little divot in his chin.

But if I touched him, he would wake up. And that would lead to awkwardness and that weird moment when you struggle out of bed trying to prevent the other person from seeing you naked, despite the fact that he’d seen pretty much the whole package the night before. Heck, Will had pretty much redesigned my package. I had to get out of here before my morning hair was spotted. I eased out from under his arm, my face screwed up in concentration as I tried to avoid jostling him. His hand slipped off my shoulder and thumped to the mattress. He murmured something in his sleep and stroked his hand over the warm spot I’d left behind.

I scootched down the bed, making the springs squeak. I winced at the noise, which seemed ten times louder than any bed had ever squeaked before. Will’s face twitched, but his eyes stayed closed. I scooped my jeans and panties up from the floor, cringing at the thought of second-day undies. I supposed this was the price one paid for slightly skanky behavior.

I stepped out of bed using the ridiculous Scooby-Doo cartoon tiptoe, only to feel my legs yanked out from under me. “Yipe!” I cried as I landed face-first on the carpet. And call me crazy, but I could swear I heard bells jangling over my head.

I looked up to see a jump rope strung with decorative Christmas jingle bells tied from the leg of Will’s dresser to the corner post of his bed. A rope that was now shaking and jingling like crazy.

Overhead, the mattress dipped and Will’s tousled dark blond head appeared from under the blankets. He grinned down at me. “Hi there.”

“You set up a trip wire?” I growled.

“Well, you snuck out last time. And you were gonna sneak out again, weren’t you?”

“No.”

He pulled me into his lap. I leaned against him. He kissed me tentatively, a chaste kiss that shocked me in its sweetness. “So, sometime last night, during all of the nudity, you mentioned something about Mr. Roth? Color me crazy, but I don’t seem to remember you tellin’ me anything about meetin’ with Mr. Roth.”

I kissed him one more time, morning breath be darned. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up or have you sabotage what I had planned.”

He had the gall to look insulted for a moment. “That’s . . . yeah, okay, you’ve got a point.”

“I met with him on Thursday. Mr. Roth likes the idea of being ‘the underwear that cares,’ so his company is going to sponsor the move and give me a healthy chunk of money to jazz up the museum. He wants to start off on the right foot with the community.”

“So we’re gettin’ the factory?”

“And the museum,” I added, somewhat pointedly.

“This is just—” He kissed me over and over. “Thank you. Really. You don’t know what this means to everybody.”

“It’s the least I could do,” I told him. “Since I sort of messed up your deal and almost destroyed your local economy and all.”

He dropped his head, thunking his forehead against my shoulder. “I’ve talked with that Mr. Roth I don’t know how many times. I’ve never sweet-talked so much as a smile out of him. And you get him to give you a whole museum?”

I shrugged. “Well, I am charming.”

“I’ll say.” He chuckled, kissing the tip of my nose. “Charmin’, funny, smart, and very, very flexible.” He reached the tip of his tongue out to trace the seam of my mouth. I relaxed into him, wrapping my arms around his neck and stroking my thumb across the short golden hairs at his nape. I glanced over his shoulder at the alarm clock, which read 8:54 a.m.

“Ack!” I shouted, making Will wince. “Is that the time?”

I launched myself out of the bed, scrambling for my clothes. “What’s the hurry?” he asked.

“I have a progress meeting with the other sponsors, in which I have to tell them that while I appreciate their companies’ generosity, they’re about to be eclipsed by a man-panty manufacturer.” I slipped into my shoes and leaned onto the bed to give him one last kiss. “And believe me when I say this, if you come anywhere near the music hall or my sponsors—”

He raised an eyebrow. “We’ve established that you’re not very good at bein’ threatenin’, right?”

“No, I will not hurt you. I will make this face at you.” I paused and arranged my face into the most hangdog, disappointed expression I could manage.

He shuddered. “Ah, okay, okay, I give! I will stay right here. And wait for you. Naked.”

“As you should be,” I told him and ran for the door.

It was a little funny that Carrie Scofield from the Lasting Memories scrapbooking company was indeed “frozen in time.” She’d spent a considerable amount of money trying to look as though she were still in her late twenties. I was glad she told me, because with the amount of Botox she’d injected into her face, I would never be able to discern any kind of human emotion on her part. She didn’t seem to put much stock in the sentimentality of this grant program, which was disappointing, considering her position.

Aaron Larkin was the public relations manager for Stringmade, a company that produced high-end musical instruments. Aaron’s company might claim a history in bluegrass and country music going back more than a century, but he was all city-boy shine. From the product in his golden-blond hair to the sheen on his shoes, he seemed awfully concerned about not brushing up against any object that might contaminate him with Mud Creek dust.

Elliot Christiansen and James Hill, reps from AmeriSound Systems and Jarvis Digital Displays, were considerably quieter, wandering around the building to inspect the mock-ups I’d designed for my multimedia displays. I’d been reluctant to install anything because I’d hoped I might be moving them to a new location. I could see the techies’ heads bent together, sketching better electrical plans on a legal pad, which made me smile. I had respect for that sort of compulsive dedication.

This group comprised our “gold” sponsors, with lesser sponsorships from companies like Delacour Jewelers and Buffalo Creek Bourbon. Out of place they may have been, but still, they seemed charmed by the arrangement of the exhibits and the artifacts I had on display. I’d set out the “Lurlene, Lurlene” lyrics in their specially lit display case, which drew Mr. Larkin like a yuppie moth to a flame.

“You really have them, huh?” he said reverently, almost touching the glass case before shaking off his awed expression and withdrawing his hand.

“They were under a jukebox,” I told him, grinning. “Louis Gray got frustrated or had a fit of the post-breakup tantrums and tossed the papers across the room. They probably got swept under there by some not-quite-thorough janitor, and no one ever looked for them.”

“My dad taught me to play guitar to that record,” Mr. Larkin said. “It got him through a really rough time, after my mom left. And he shared it with me. He said what was most important to remember about the song was that after all that Lurlene put him through, the singer still believed he could love. Not Lurlene, necessarily, but someone. I’m alone, but—”

“Not for long, my Lurlene,” I sang softly with him, making him chuckle.

“This is really great, Miss Turkle,” he said, pulling his cell phone out of his jacket pocket. “My bosses are going to be thrilled to have their names attached to the museum. Is it okay if I take some pictures?”

I handed him a folder featuring the red McBride’s Music Hall Museum guitar logo. “I took the liberty of printing photos of some of the more important artifacts, with full descriptions.”

He flipped through the color-coded contents of the folder. “Oh, you’re good.”

“I do try.”

He glanced around, lowering his voice. “I don’t suppose you’d want to go out for a drink or something, after this is over?”

I tried to picture this guy at the Dinner Bell, ever so carefully picking at a chili cheeseburger because he was afraid of soiling his suit—or even worse, at Shooter’s, staring in horror at the mechanical bull. I chuckled, ready to let him down gently, when the front door opened and Will walked through. He caught sight of slick, polished Aaron Larkin bent over me in an intimate tete-a-tete and frowned.

“Bonnie,” he said, whipping his baseball cap from his head.

“Will, I told you. I will make the face,” I warned him, glancing at the sponsors.

He snorted. “I’m not here to make any trouble.” He reached back and pushed the door open to reveal a tall, willowy brunette in an elegant sage-green dress suit. “This lady showed up at my office lookin’ for ya.”

“Sadie!” I exclaimed, rushing forward to hug her before I remembered the “possibly getting fired” conversation from the airport. She gave me a little squeeze, which I took as a good sign. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, Will called me first thing this morning to praise you to the skies, telling me what a fantastic job you were doing here. He said your hard work—including securing the ComfyCheeks sponsorship—had completely changed his mind about the museum project. And that he plans to write a follow-up letter to that effect and send it to every office he contacted previously. I was in Barbourville, meeting with some locals about the Daniel Boone Festival, and I just had to come by and see for myself.”

“Oh well, come have a look,” I told her, leading her around the room and introducing her to the various reps. Sadie kept her arm threaded through Will’s, though I wasn’t sure whether it was because she wanted to gauge his honest reaction to the revamped museum or because she was afraid he was actually on some sort of sabotage mission. Will made the appropriate pleased sounds over the various displays, but paused when he reached the photo wall I’d set up near Mr. McBride’s office. I’d used the pictures Brenda had provided of the family—George and Pearl McBride standing outside the newly opened music hall, Jim McBride at the grill with his arm around Brenda, Will as a young child with various music greats. I’d kept the framing simple, but overlapping in some places, so the effect was that of a big photographic quilt. I was having frosted-glass plaques made to explain the family history and the McBrides’ efforts to keep the music hall open. For now, my neatly typed notes were pinned to the wall near the display, with another placeholder sign that stated, “This museum is dedicated to the McBride family and their tireless efforts to provide entertainment and harmony to their community.”

I looked at Will. For just a second, I detected a sheen to his blue eyes that looked suspiciously like tears. “This is . . . pretty great,” he said.

“I agree,” Sadie said, beaming at me. “Bonnie, this is something. This is the best thing you’ve ever put together.”

“It still needs some work,” I told her. “And obviously, I’ll be packing everything up soon so we can move it to the new location. But I’ve arranged all of the displays so they’re self-contained. It shouldn’t be too much work to relocate. I’ll be bouncing back and forth between the office and the museum site for the next few months.”

“That’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about,” Sadie said.

My eyes went wide with alarm. Wait, was this the serious talk we were supposed to have about my job? Was she really going to have a performance review/firing right here in front of everybody? I glanced back at the sponsors, who were still happily perusing corners of the building.

“Bonnie, put away the Precious Moments eyes,” Sadie told me, shaking my arms gently. “It’s okay.”

“Do I need to step aside?” Will asked Sadie.

“No,” Sadie said. “Judging from how pale her face is going, I might need you to catch her or something.”

“Just get on with it,” I groaned, even as Will’s hand hovered at my back.

Sadie snorted delicately. “You would think I was giving her bad news instead of giving her a promotion.”

I blinked at her. “I’m sorry?”

“We would like you to act as liaison between our office and the museums in the state, setting up traveling exhibits and exhibitions and providing support through the tourism commission’s resources.”

“I thought the tourism commission didn’t have the money for a promotion for me,” I whispered as Will gently gripped my elbow.

“Well, I don’t want to encourage Will, but his ‘Bonnie is a loose cannon’ letter went a little viral and got bounced around the online historical community. Certain elements within several historical societies found your ‘take no prisoners’ approach to preservation refreshingly bold. They were more than willing to set up a grant program that will fund a full-time position for you, for at least the next three years. By the end of that period, Kelsey should be able to find some damaging information on a state legislator whom we can blackmail into a funding bump.”

“Is she kidding?” Will whispered.

“Well, when she and Kelsey get together . . . you never know,” I muttered out of the side of my mouth.

“Here is a packet detailing your new salary and job description.” Sadie handed me a heavy manila envelope.

“Even after everything that happened here, you still want me to spend more time around the office?” I asked her.

“Because of everything that happened here,” she said. “Yes, I was upset by the bad press and general discontent in the community. But you didn’t panic. You kept working and found a solution that works for everybody. And seeing this place—honestly, Bonnie, it was all worth it. You’re valuable in the field, but we need someone who thinks like you giving us creative input at the commission office.”

“Really?” I cried, squeezing Will’s hands as I hopped up and down.

“Yes. If you promise to stop squealing like that.”

“So when would you need me to start?” I asked.

“Let’s talk about that when you don’t have a pack of sponsors to entertain,” Sadie said, winking at me. “Congratulations, Bonnie.”

I squealed happily, rubbing my hands together. This promotion sounded perfect for me, a blend of the fieldwork I was already doing and the more administrative tasks I felt I was ready for. I couldn’t wait to wrap up the visit with the sponsors so I could go out with Will and celebrate. There would be chili cheeseburgers and good beer and, if I was a lucky girl, a second round of sex.

But when I turned toward the dance floor to inform him of my plans, Will was gone.

15

In Which I Become the Office Grump

My office chair was making me all twitchy.

I couldn’t seem to get comfortable. The springs were poking me in the back. The seat felt uneven. And when I leaned back, it felt like the whole thing was about to tip over. I adjusted it. I got a special cushion. Nothing I did made the chair more comfortable. Despite my good deeds over the past few weeks, I seemed to be suffering from some sort of evil chair karma.

My attitude toward my chair seemed to reflect my dissatisfaction with the recent changes in my life overall. Now that I was back in Frankfort, I was at loose ends. Until the company Mr. Roth hired to move the building could schedule the transport, I didn’t have much to do. My corner of Kelsey’s apartment seemed a sad substitute for the home I’d found in Mud Creek. I had an idea for another project there, which I had pitched to Miss Martha, but nothing was concrete.

Working in one place for an extended period of time, knowing there was no reprieve in sight when I needed distraction so badly, was less blissful than I had anticipated. While I enjoyed seeing Kelsey and Sadie and the office staff more often, I chafed at the routine. Phone conferences, lunch meetings, budget arguments—the same thing, day in and day out, as I made the initial contacts with museum administrators statewide. The satisfaction I usually got from my work felt muted and hollow.

And looking for my own apartment wasn’t nearly as much fun as I thought it was going to be. It turns out Kentucky grows way bigger roaches than you would believe could thrive in a rural environment. And they all seemed to live in the buildings where I wanted to lease.

I was sure the job satisfaction issues would work themselves out once I got through the initial growing pains. The real problem was that I’d barely spoken to Will since the sponsor visit. As I was packing up the exhibits to ship to storage before the move, he’d sent Fred and Joe Bob to help me instead of coming himself. He didn’t answer my calls or texts. He claimed he was busy meeting with ComfyCheeks management to get the factory plans off the ground. He didn’t even come by Miss Martha’s house when Kelsey came down to help me move out.

Of course, at the time, I was a bit more distracted by the unholy alliance of Miss Martha and Kelsey, who, both being bred-in-the-bone smart-asses, hit it off almost immediately.

“Oh, honey,” Miss Martha sighed, marveling at Kelsey’s figure. “You would have been the belle of the circuit. Haven’t seen a set like those since Sugar Beveaux.”

“. . . Thank you?” Kelsey said, clearly confused by an elderly stranger’s interest in her boobs.

I could see Miss Martha twitching her hands for her measuring tape, already designing a bustier for Kelsey in her head.

In hindsight, maybe I should have asked Kelsey’s nerd herd to help me move.

Will’s indifference hurt, but I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised. He wasn’t a relationship guy. He was the charming, “the most you’re going to get out of me is friends with benefits” guy. But I wasn’t getting the friendship, or even basic courtesy. He hadn’t even liked me that much. That chemistry and banter and flirting I thought we shared was a lie. All I wanted to do was crawl into bed and cry. I’d never had a reaction like this to a breakup, and technically, Will and I hadn’t even had a relationship to break up. Most of my relationships ended on sad but determined notes, with parties swearing to be emotionally mature. I found one boyfriend getting it on in his apartment with one of those “performance artists” who painted herself silver and stood really still in exchange for pocket money. I didn’t have this sort of reaction when I discovered him in his bedroom doing reverse cowgirl with a “living statue.” So why was I so upset now?

Will had never given me reason to think we were anything more than hormone-bearing ships passing in the night. And still, I missed him so much my chest hurt, like a ragged Will-shaped wound had opened up where my heart was supposed to be.

The next time I considered starting an emotionally ambivalent, sexually fueled relationship with a representative of local government while working in his jurisdiction, I would ask Kelsey to jab me with something very, very sharp.

Speaking of my romantically challenged best friend, Kelsey stood at my office door with a potted cactus in her hand. Clearly she had remembered my tendency to murder desktop plants.

“Decorations for your permanent digs,” she announced. She slunk through my door like some sort of femme fatale in a film noir, in a long black pencil skirt and a navy silk blouse that made her eyes stand out. I glanced down at the red cardigan and khakis I’d adopted as a concession to Sadie’s “no jeans in the office” policy.

Sometimes I hated Kelsey, just the tiniest bit.

I’d bet she’d hold Will’s attention for more than a few minutes at a time. And now I was thinking about Will again, which was decidedly unhelpful.

“Do you want it on your desk?” Kelsey asked.

“Mmmhmm,” I said absentmindedly.

“And I’m thinking about tattooing Darrell’s name across my boobs. For his birthday.”

I nodded, chewing on my lip. “Okay, then.”

Kelsey whacked the side of my head with a file folder. “I can’t believe you just said that. Come on, Bon, you’re not your usual relentlessly perky self!” she exclaimed. “Normally you would have corrected my poor attitude and outlook on life at least three times today, particularly when I made that crack this morning in the coffee room about my thighs. Is it the museum sponsors? Because Sadie said they’re on board and very impressed with your progress so far. Mr. Larkin even wants to contribute a bluegrass string quartet to the opening festivities.”

I cleared my throat. “I’m just nervous, being in the office again. It feels really confining.”

“So it has nothing to do with that hunky mayor you suddenly stopped talking about altogether, which is completely unheard of from you and frankly is starting to creep me out a little bit.”

“I have nothing to say about him,” I said, my face a blank, pleasant mask that made Kelsey shudder.

“Honey, this sort of mad only comes when you really care about the person who did the hurting.”

“I never said I didn’t care about him. I said I don’t want to talk to or about him.”

“But do you really think you can just avoid him?” Kelsey asked. “You don’t think he’s going to show up at the museum opening?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I can’t spend my time worrying about that. I need to focus on the work, do the best job I can, and keep the promises I made.”

“You do realize that we work for the department of tourism, right? Not the Justice League? Because you sounded a little vigilante just then.”

“Shut up, Kelsey.”

Kelsey put her cactus on my desk and said, “See, that’s a tone I’m more comfortable with. Speaking of which, we have a staff meeting in an hour, so come prepared to brainstorm for this year’s team-building retreat.”

“Already? Isn’t that thing scheduled in February?”

“Sadie likes to get an early start,” Kelsey said, shrugging, sauntering out of my office with a wave.

I’d totally forgotten that as a member of the permanent, office-based staff, I would have to attend the annual staff retreat. The office always booked three days at some off-season lodge in the middle of nowhere, so the staff would be forced to bond while discussing the upcoming tourist season. Trapped for three days in the woods with my coworkers.

“Awesome.” I leaned down and thunked my head against my desk.

“I know I don’t spend much time in a big fancy office, but I don’t think that’s what you’re supposed to do with a desk.”

I looked up to see Will standing there in all his plaid-clad glory, clutching a bunch of cellophane-wrapped sunflowers in his hand. He looked just as good as, if not better than, that postcoital image in my head I’d obsessed over. I was a basket case and there he was, grinning at me like he didn’t have a care in the world. My mouth dropped open and without thinking, I swept my hand toward the mini-cactus Kelsey had placed on my desk. I whipped it across the room at Will’s head.

Will quickly sidestepped the flying succulent, only to have it smash against the reception desk behind him. Charlie Bennett, the secret object of Kelsey’s affections, stuck his head in my door.

“Bonnie, I know we haven’t spent a lot of time together, but I don’t think I’ve done anything to deserve a drive-by cactus,” he said.

“Sorry, I wasn’t aiming for you,” I said, glaring at Will.

“Well, that’s a relief,” Charlie said, and continued on his way down the hall.

I kept my hostile gaze on Will.

“You threw a cactus at my head,” he said, pointing at the aforementioned noggin.

“Sorry. It was instinct. I am really angry with you for reasons I don’t quite understand. Don’t worry. I’m all out of potted desert plants.”

“I was going to tell ya that I’m sorry and that everybody misses ya,” he told me. “But I think I’ve changed my mind on both counts.”

“I guess I’m a little angrier with you than I thought.”

“I guess I deserve that,” he said, flopping into the chair in front of my desk. It was probably more comfortable than my own chair. “My mom sent this for you.”

I opened the sparkly blue gift bag he offered me and found a framed picture of Will and me dancing at the burgoo party. I had my head tilted back, laughing at something Will had said. He was grinning down at me, a fond, slightly stunned expression on his face, like I was lighting up his world. A strange response from a guy who couldn’t be bothered to return phone calls.

“Your mother is not a subtle woman,” I told him.

“No, she is not,” he agreed. “But she took it at the party and wanted ya to have it. She says you’re part of Mud Creek history now, too. The stubborn mule who saved McBride’s.”

“You really suck at this apologizing thing, don’t you?” I deadpanned as he circled my desk and pulled me out of my chair.

“Hey, I like that you’re stubborn,” he told me. “I like that ya refuse to give up even when common sense would tell you it’s time. I think you’re beautiful and sweet and funny. And I’ve even gotten to the point where I don’t mind the whole ‘glass half full of sunshine and unicorn crap’ thing you have going. It’s like making out with my favorite kindergarten teacher.”

“That’s a little disturbing.”

He pursed his lips. “You never saw Miss Ferris; she was a total hottie.”

I smacked his shoulder. “I will put you in time out!”

“God, that sounds sexier than it should.” When I groaned and dropped my forehead against his collarbone, he sighed.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “You haven’t returned my calls or my texts. You barely talked to me before I left town. Why would you show up all of a sudden with flowers and act like you care?”

“I do care,” he insisted.

“Then you need to go to some sort of remedial class on how to show it.”

“Look, I have been busy with Mr. Roth and his winged monkeys,” he said. “That’s no excuse, I’m just sayin’. I haven’t been callin’ because I didn’t want you to stay in Mud Creek.”

“You suck at apologizing and explaining yourself,” I told him.

“I saw the look on your face when Sadie offered you that promotion. You were so excited and happy . . . and I just didn’t want to take that away from ya. I mean, what were ya gonna do, stay in Mud Creek and work in my trailer office as head of the chamber of commerce? I thought ya belonged in a big city like this, with people who actually understand what you’re talking about half the time . . . and with fellas like that three-piece suit who was flirtin’ with ya when I walked into the music hall. So I pulled back, because I thought it would make things easier for you, and I was miserable. I wallowed. It wasn’t pretty. It took the combined forces of my mom, Jenny Lee, and Miss Martha to dynamite my ass off of my couch, give me the lecture of a lifetime, shove me in the shower, and put me in my truck to get me here.”

“Miss Martha saw you in the shower?”

“Out of all that, that’s what ya picked up on?” He frowned.

“I am not going to comment on the three-piece suit, who was asking me out at the moment you walked in. Because I wasn’t interested in him. He was very nice. But I doubt that our ideas of a good time would have matched up. I’m pretty sure he would faint if I handed him a plate of burgoo. And my job, my background isn’t going to change. If you can’t get past what you think I deserve, I don’t know what to tell you . . . except that I care about you and you make me laugh, when you’re not annoying the hell out of me.”

He grinned and bent his head to kiss me, and I ducked my head out of the way. “This is the part where you tell me you won’t freak out and hide from me instead of talking to me when things get difficult.”

“Bonnie, I want to know where this could go. I know it wouldn’t be the same as livin’ in a big city, but I think you could make a home in Mud Creek. And I know for a fact the local government is very historian friendly.”

I reached up and slapped at his chest, even as he kissed me.

“I really, really want to,” I told him. “But my job is here.”

“We’d work it out,” he told me. “There’s no rule that says this has to be your home base, right? You could, what’s it called, telecommute? And when you have meetings, I could drive you here to Frankfort. You know, to prevent roadside fires.” I slapped at him again. “And maybe you could show me what’s so great about living here. Museums, fancy restaurants, being closer to UK games . . . U of L games . . . Murray State games . . .”

“We’re going to spend a lot of time at basketball games, aren’t we?” I asked. Will beamed at me. “Well, as appealing as that sounds, Sadie would never let me get away with it. I just got hired on as a full-time employee, after I basically begged her to give me the position. She’s not going to let me do ‘full-time’ over the Internet.”

“Actually,” Sadie said, poking her head through my door, “I’d be willing to work with you on that. As long as you spent at least two weeks of the month in the office and could teleconference on a regular basis, I think I could get Ray to approve a flexible schedule.”

“Aw, Sadie!” Kelsey exclaimed from behind her. “You big softie.”

“Anything that keeps you happy and productive and prevents further cactus damage to certain valued members of our staff.”

Kelsey dropped her head into her hands. “It was so close to being a nice gesture. Really.” She looped her arm through Sadie’s and dragged her out of the office. “Come on, Ms. Lack of Filter.”

“Thanks, boss!” I yelled after her. Sadie waggled her coffee cup at me while Kelsey made thumbs-up gestures at an unsuspecting Will.

“Please come home with me,” he asked.

“Okay, I will. I’d already planned to come back to Mud Creek.”

His whole face lit up with his smile. “Really?”

“I have to. I’m overseeing the building being moved and the exhibits being reassembled.”

And there went the happy face. “Oh, right. Way to bust a guy’s bubble.”

“And I have been toying with the idea of opening a burlesque museum. Miss Martha has this whole collection of pictures and costumes she’s made over the years. Right now, she’s deciding whether she’ll let me use them. Burlesque is making a bit of a comeback—people are fascinated by strippers who don’t take their clothes off.”

“I don’t know if we want to put a stripper museum in my hometown,” he said, frowning. “It’s not exactly the ‘family friendly’ entertainment that you’ve been pushing.”

“I’m not saying install poles. It’s about the music and the costumes and the glamour. You could restore one of those old boardinghouses where the dancers used to perform. The Washington Street House or the Pink Lady.”

“Pink Lady?”

“You never noticed a three-story house on Third Street the color of Pepto-Bismol?”

“Yeah, my mom said it was used for sewin’ club meetings— Ohhhh.” He frowned. “It wasn’t a sewin’ club at all.”

“Your lack of knowledge about your own town’s history appalls me.”

“So, more restoration?”

I rolled my eyes at him.

He threw his hands up in a defensive gesture. “I’m just sayin’, we barely survived your first project.”

“Well, Miss Martha hasn’t agreed to anything yet, so don’t worry. And I will come to see you, too. But I’m not ready to make any sort of decision yet,” I told him. “We’re just going to have to see how things go when we don’t have the fate of an entire town hanging over our heads.”

“Aw, you do like me, don’t you, Fancy Pants?”

“Jackass.”

“There’s my girl.”

16

In Which I Agree to Sunday Dinner and Inappropriate Lingerie All in One Day

The citizens of Mud Creek had a lot of reasons for celebrating, and I made sure my museum opening provided them an excellent opportunity to let it all hang out. There was a line winding out the door of people waiting to get in. And to keep them happy, we’d fired up the newly refurbished hamburger grill and delivered lunch baskets to them while they waited. Others danced to the strains of the Stringmade quartet, occasionally bumping into the people trying to read the display placards for the exhibits.

Considering the move and multiple packing episodes, the displays had turned out very well. The jukebox could be controlled through smart tablets mounted in several spots around the main room, and played only songs by artists who had graced the McBride’s stage. Wrestling costumes, country-and-western shirts, and a few musical instruments were displayed in Plexiglas cases flanked by video screens and sharp reproductions of old black-and-white photos. Some video panels displayed slide shows of still shots from the performances. Others showed videos we’d transferred from Pearl McBride’s 8 mm films.

They were insanely difficult and expensive to restore, but the effect was great. Will seemed to enjoy the fact that every few minutes in the loop, I’d placed a placard that read “Video courtesy of the McBride Family Collection.”

Mr. Roth walked through the entrance. He looked a bit out of place in his expensive suit, as did his similarly dressed entourage of undie lackeys, but his grin as he walked through the door was undeniable. I was supposed to make a big show of introducing him later, both as a vested sponsor in the museum and the future employer of many of the attendees. He seemed a bit gleeful to be recognized for his part in saving the town. I guess one didn’t get a lot of opportunities for adulation in his line of work.

I felt a bump against my hip and turned to find Brenda, wearing a pretty green church dress that slid over her curves like water. Her hair was piled in shiny blond coils on top of her head, and she’d taken special care with her makeup. It made her look fifteen years younger.

“I’m so proud of you, honey. It turned out so well!” Brenda exclaimed. “Will’s father and grandfather would have just loved this. Speaking of, where is that son of mine?”

“I haven’t seen him yet,” I said, glancing around the room.

“Well, if he doesn’t show up in the next few minutes, I’ll drive to his house and drag him here. Oh, and he’s supposed to tell you that you’re coming to my place for dinner on Sunday. Because he’s afraid I’ll show you baby pictures, he’ll tell me that you have some sort of scheduling conflict, so I’m cutting out the middleman and settling on a date with you.”

“If it makes you feel any better, evasion is a perfectly normal reaction to having your mother invite your lady friend over for Sunday dinner. In fact, you may have doomed our relationship before it even started.”

“Oh, hush, you. Now, who is that man in the suit?” she asked, craning her neck to watch Mr. Roth as he wandered around the exhibits. There was a note of tension in her voice, an interest I hadn’t expected. And if the way she was eyeballing Mr. Roth’s backside was any indication, it wasn’t the suit she was interested in.

“How would you like to meet an underwear magnate?” I asked her, fighting to contain my smirk. This would teach Will to be late to an event and leave his mother unattended.

She pinked up prettily, spluttering, “What? No! Who even calls themselves a magnate anymore?”

“He didn’t call himself that, I did,” I teased, elbowing her in the ribs. “Come on, he’s really a nice guy. Once you get past wondering what he’s wearing under the suit, he’s really easy to talk to.”

“Why’d you have to bring up what was under the suit?” she groaned, pressing her hands over her face as I dragged her toward Mr. Roth.

With my possible boyfriend’s mother secured in an extremely flirtatious conversation with Mr. Roth, I had a chance to circulate around the room, check the electronic displays, and wonder where the heck said wayward possible boyfriend was.

“Psst.” I paused. “Pssst.” I looked around to find the source of the impatient hissing and saw Miss Martha waving at me from the rear of the hall. It seemed as if she’d been doing this for some time, because when I finally did notice her, she rolled her eyes and motioned for me to follow her toward the dressing rooms. Frowning, I walked away from the crowd and joined her at the end of the little hallway.

When I’d moved the dressing rooms to the new site, I’d tried to leave them as close as possible to how I found them when I first arrived at the music hall, as if a band had just prettied themselves up and walked out onstage. Miss Martha was waiting for me just in front of the red velvet rope I’d strung across the door to keep people from walking all the way into the space.

“Miss Martha? Did you sneak in the back door?”

“I have my ways, sweetie. You know I don’t like people,” she said, presenting a carefully wrapped box with a bright pink bow. “I just wanted to give you my congratulations. And a little something to mark the occasion.”

“Aw, you didn’t have to do that.” I opened up the box. Inside was a silvery white satin bustier with tiny black seams piped along the corset boning. Dancing between those lines were dozens of tiny music notes that swirled up the corset toward black satin bustier cups. There was a pattern to the notes’ arrangement, a tune I couldn’t quite pick out.

“Is this sheet music to a song, Miss Martha?” Miss Martha nodded, a gleeful gleam in her eyes. “Which one?”

Miss Martha shrugged. “You’re just going to have to wear it for the honorable Mayor McBride and find out for yourself. He’s always been handy with instruments.”

“Wow, Miss Martha. I don’t know what to say.”

“I eyeballed your measurements, but it should fit just fine,” she assured me. “Wear it in good health and think of me.”

“Considering the context of wearing this getup, I’ll try to avoid the ‘thinking of you’ part, if that’s okay,” I told her, wrapping an arm around her. “But I love it, Miss Martha. Thank you.”

“Well, tell Kelsey I’m still coming up with something special for her. And just so you know, we’re having pot roast for dinner tonight to celebrate your big success,” she said. “You can invite your fella if you’d like.”

I smirked. “Are you trying to sweet-talk me into staying at your house permanently, Miss Martha?”

“No such thing.” She sniffed. “I just miss my surrogate cat.”

I snorted. “Well, don’t worry. We’re going to see plenty of each other over the next few months as we put the burlesque museum together.”

“I guess that will do,” she said, barely concealing the gleeful smile forming at the corners of her mouth. “Now, I’m going to sneak back out of here before anybody sees me and expects me to make small talk.” She shuddered. “See you tonight, sweetie.”

I chuckled, watching my elderly former roommate slink out the back door like a ninja. I made a mental note to introduce her to Mr. Roth, because if I could get ComfyCheeks to produce a line of corsets by Miss Martha, I could consider my life’s work complete.

Where the heck was Will? I couldn’t make Mr. Roth’s big introduction without the mayor here. I could use Mr. McGlory in a pinch, but he seemed immobilized in front of the “Lurlene” display.

At the far end of the room, in its own little alcove, I’d set up a display detailing the love story between “Lurlene” and Louis. The centerpiece, of course, was the crumpled first draft of the lyrics. I’d flanked it with a photo of Louis kissing Miss Earlene’s cheek. There was a video interview with Earlene that I’d done in the library, in which she detailed their brief courtship and her thoughts on his success after he’d left her. The strains of “Lurlene, Lurlene” played softly in the background.

Tommy McGlory stood slack-jawed as he watched his sister transform into a blushing schoolgirl, shyly discussing the first time she let Louis drive her home, dropping her off a block from their house so their mother wouldn’t hear the car pull up.

“Fifty years and she never said anything,” he said, his eyes tearing up a bit at the corners. “She could have had a life. She could have married and had kids. She could have—”

“Wait a few minutes,” I told him, knowing that in the next section of the interview, Earlene talked about her reasons for staying in Mud Creek and not having any regrets for her decision. Imagine Earlene McGlory’s surprise a few moments later, when her nearly sixty-year-old brother ran across the room and sideswiped her with a full-body hug.

What surprised me was the number of locals who stopped by to tell me how much they were enjoying the displays and thanking me for my efforts. A few of them, including Fred, Joe Bob, Chrissy, and Rosemarie Fitzpatrick, even apologized for giving me a hard time.

“Just make sure this new article is a little kinder,” I told Rosemarie, nodding toward her scribble-filled notebook. “And that there’s a better picture this time.”

“Oh, honey, you only take good pictures,” a husky voice cooed close to my ear. I yelped, turning to find my wayward possible boyfriend grinning down at me. “Why is my mother flirting with the foremost manufacturer of tighty-whities in the known universe?”

“I was afraid you weren’t coming!” I cried, throwing my arms around him.

“Sorry, I got hung up. Miss Penny decided to spray paint the windows in the town hall trailer black, and we had to do a little cleanup.”

“At least there wasn’t any sewage this time,” I said brightly, making him shake his head at my idea of a silver lining.

“Here, why don’t you and Will get together and I’ll take one of the both of you,” Rosemarie suggested, her tone slightly frosty now as she eyed the way we wrapped around each other. “You might want to strike a more professional pose.”

Will slipped his arm around my shoulders and gave the camera his best panty-dropping smile. “So you know that we’re going to have to get married, right?” he whispered. “I don’t think the people in Mud Creek would think much of their mayor living in sin with his girlfriend.”

Rosemarie’s first picture was of my mouth hanging open and my eyes bugged out in surprise. Nice.

“If that’s a proposal, it’s the worst one I’ve ever heard,” I said, through a carefully composed smile as Rosemarie took another shot. “And who says I’m going to be living with you? Miss Martha has my old room all ready for me. She misses her surrogate cat.”

“I will never understand your relationship with that woman,” he said, shaking his head as Rosemarie wandered away.

“No, you will not.”

“Okay, so no marriage proposal yet,” he agreed. “But please don’t move into Miss Martha’s place. Live with me.”

“Not for a few months. Until you can come up with a much better proposal.”

“Agreed. Fred’s idea was to go back to the place where we met. He even agreed to drag the body of your old car out there and set it on fire for us again.”

“How romantic.”

“It was better than Joe Bob’s idea, which involved Flotsam and Jetsam up there,” he said, nodding toward the stuffed possums mounted in the rafters of the balcony.

“No marriage proposal should involve possums, Will.”

“Clearly you’ve never heard the story of how my dad proposed to my mom.”

I scoffed, jostling his shoulder. “You’re making that up!”

“I never joke about history.” He kissed my forehead and pulled me into his arms. “You know me. I have nothing but respect for history.”

Click through for a sneak peek of the next scintillating tale by Molly Harper

How to Run with a Naked Werewolf

Available January 2014 from Pocket Books

1

All the Pretty Pintos

If Gordie Fugate didn’t hurry the hell up and pick out a cereal, I was going to bludgeon him with a canned ham.

I didn’t mind working at Emerson’s Dry Goods, but I was wrapping up a sixteen-hour shift. My back ached. My stiff green canvas apron was chafing my neck. And one of the Glisson twins had dropped a gallon jar of mayo on my big toe earlier. I hadn’t been this exhausted since doing an emergency rotation during my medical residency. The only nice thing I could say about working at Emerson’s was that the owner hadn’t asked for photo identification when I applied, eliminating an awful lot of worry for my undocumented self. Also, I usually dealt with less blood.

Unless, of course, I did bludgeon Gordie with the ham, which would result in a serious amount of cleanup in aisle five.

I only had a few more weeks of checkout duty before I would be moving on, winding my way toward Anchorage. It was just easier that way. Now that I was living in what I called “the gray zone,” I knew there was a maximum amount of time people could spend around me before they resented unanswered personal questions. Of course, I’d also learned a few other things, like how to recognize a guy who planned on following me to my car or how to patch a pair of shoes with duct tape. And now I was trying to learn the zen art of not bashing an indecisive cornflake lover over the head with preserved pork products.

I glanced back to Gordie, who was now considering his oatmeal options.

I swore loudly enough to attract the attention of my peroxide-blond fellow retail service engineer Belinda. Middle-aged, pear-shaped, and possessing a smoker’s voice that put that Exorcist kid to shame, Belinda was the assistant manager at Emerson’s, the closest thing to a retail mecca in McClusky, a tiny ditchwater town on the easternmost border of Alaska. Because I was still a probationary employee, I wasn’t allowed to close up on my own. But Belinda was friendly and seemed eager to make me a “lifer” at Emerson’s like herself. I suspected she wasn’t allowed to retire until she found a replacement.

“I’ve known Gordie for almost forty years. He can make a simple decision feel like the end of Sophie’s Choice,” she said, putting a companionable arm around me as I slumped against my counter. It was an accomplishment that I was able to give her a little squeeze in return. It had taken me months not to flinch when someone new got inside my personal-space bubble. This was a particularly useful skill, considering I’d spent the last three years in the company of some very “demonstrative” people. Shrieking and shoving when someone patted you on the back tended to draw attention.

“You’re thinking about throwing one of those canned hams at him, aren’t you?”

I sighed. “I guess I’ve made that threat before, huh?”

Belinda snickered at my irritated tone. I glared at her. She assured me, “I’m laughing for you, Anna, not at you.”

I offered her a weak but genuine smile. “Feels the same either way.”

“Why don’t you go on home, hon?” Belinda suggested. “I know you worked a double when that twit Haley called in sick. For the third time this week, I might add. I’ll close up. You go get some food in you. You’re looking all pale and sickly again.”

I sighed again, smiling at her. When I’d first arrived at Emerson’s, Belinda had taken one look at my waxy cheeks and insisted on sending me home with a “signing-bonus box” of high-calorie, high-protein foods. I was sucking down protein shakes and Velveeta for a week. Every time I put a pound on my short, thin frame, she considered it a personal victory. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that my pallor wasn’t from malnutrition but from stress and sleep deprivation. I gave her another squeeze. “I haven’t been sleeping well, that’s all. Thanks. I owe you.”

“Yeah, you do,” she said as I whipped my green Emerson’s apron over my head and stuffed it into my bag. As I made my way to the employee locker room, I heard her yell, “Damn it, Gordie, it’s just Cream of Wheat. It’s not like you’re pulling somebody’s plug!”

Chuckling, I slipped out the back through the employee exit, waiting for the slap of frigid September air to steal my breath. I snuggled deeper into my thick winter jacket, grateful for its insulating warmth. Years before, when I’d first arrived in Alaska, I’d brought only the barest essentials. I’d spent most of my cross-state drive shivering so hard I could barely steer. Eager to help me acclimate, my new neighbors had taken great pains to help me select the most sensible jacket, the most reasonably priced all-weather boots. I missed those neighbors with a bone-deep ache that I couldn’t blame on the cold. I missed the people who had become my family. I missed the valley I’d made home. The thought of trying to make that place for myself all over again tipped my exhaustion into full-on despair.

Fumbling with the keys to my powder-blue-and-rust Pinto, I heard someone say, “Just tell Jake I’ll get him the money in a week.”

Another gruffer, calmer voice answered, “Marty, relax. Jake didn’t send me. I just stopped in for a burger and a beer. I’m not here for you.”

I closed my eyes, hoping to block out the shadowy forms in the far corner of the employee lot that Emerson’s shared with the Wishy-Washy Laundromat and Flapjack’s Saloon. I didn’t want to see any of this. I didn’t want the liability of witnessing some sort of criminal transaction. I just wanted to go home to my motel room and stand in the shower until I no longer felt the pain of sixteen hours and a jumbo jar of mayonnaise on my feet. I turned my back to the voices, struggling to work the sticky lock on my driver’s-side door.

“Don’t feed me that bullshit,” the reedier, slightly whiny voice countered. “He sent you after me when I owed him ten. You don’t think he’s going to do it again now that I owe him seventeen?”

“I’m telling you, I’m not here for you. But if you don’t put that goddamn gun away, I might change my mind.”

Gun? Did he say “gun”?

Who the hell has a gunfight in the parking lot behind a Laundromat?

I focused on keeping my hands from shaking as I jiggled the key in the lock. Stupid 1980s tumbler technology! I gave myself another five seconds to open the door before I would just run back to the Emerson’s employee entrance.

That was my plan, until the point when I heard the gunshot . . . and the screech of tires . . . and the roar of an engine coming way too close. I turned just in time to see the back end of a shiny black SUV barreling toward me and my car. I took three steps before throwing myself into the bed of a nearby pickup truck. Even before I peered over the lip of the bed, I knew the loud, tortured metallic squeal was the SUV pulverizing my Pinto.

“Seriously?” I cried, watching my car disintegrate in front of my very eyes.

The SUV struggled to disengage its back end from the wreckage of my now-inoperable car. As the driver gunned the engine, I followed the beams of the headlights across the lot to a man curled in the fetal position on the ground.

My eyes darted back and forth between the injured man and the growling black vehicle. This was none of my business. I didn’t know this guy. I didn’t know what he’d done to make Mr. SUV want to run him down like a dog. But despite the fact that every instinct told me to stay put, stay down until Gruff Sexy Voice was a little man-pancake, I launched myself out of the truck bed and ran across the lot. I dashed toward the hunched form on the ground, sliding on the gravel when I bent to help him. I tamped down my instinct to keep him still while I assessed the damage, assuring myself that any wounds he had would definitely prove fatal if he were run over by a large vehicle.

“Get up!” I shouted as the SUV wrenched free of my erstwhile transportation and lurched toward us.

Mr. Pancake-to-Be struggled to his knees. I tucked my arms under his sleeves and pulled, my arms burning with the effort to lift him off the ground.

“Get your butt off the concrete, now!” I grunted, heaving him out of the path of the SUV. I felt a set of car keys dangling out of his jacket pocket. I clicked the fob button until I heard a beep and turned toward the noise.

Just as I got him on his feet, the headlights of the SUV flared. We stumbled forward, falling between his truck and Belinda’s hatchback. The hatchback shuddered with a tortured metallic shriek as the SUV sideswiped it. I jerked the passenger door of the truck open, slid across the seat, and dragged him inside. When I pulled it back, my hand was red and slick with blood. He groaned as he tried to fold his long legs into the passenger seat. I reached over him to slam the door.

“Not smart,” I mumbled, slipping the key into the ignition. “Like ‘and she was never heard from again’ not smart.”

I watched as the SUV careened off the far corner of the lot into the grass. The ground there was soupy and particularly fragrant, thanks to a septic-tank leak. The owner of Flapjack’s had warned us not to park anywhere near it, or we’d end up stuck to our axles in substances best not imagined, which is what was happening to the SUV the more it spun its wheels. I glanced between my demolished car and the guy who seemed so hell-bent on killing my passenger. At this point, I didn’t know which was more distressing. The SUV driver stepped out, slipping and sliding in the muck that had sucked him in to the ankles. There was a flash of metal in his hand as he strode toward the truck. A gun. He was pointing a gun at us.

Fortunately for me and my barely conscious passenger, the SUV guy wandered a little too close to my Pinto. And my rusted-out baby, being the most temperamentally explosive of all makes and models, had not taken kindly to being squished by the big, mean off-roader. My notoriously delicate gas tank was leaking fuel all over the parking lot, dangerously close to the lard bucket Flapjack’s set out back to catch employees’ cigarette butts. And because the saloon was staffed by likable though lazy people, there were always a few smoldering butts lying around on the gravel.

WHOOSH.

The fuel ignited, sending my car up like a badly upholstered Roman candle. Mr. SUV was thrown to the ground as a little mushroom cloud exploded over us.

Good. Explosions drew a lot of attention. People would come running out to see what had happened, and Mr. SUV couldn’t afford that many witnesses. This guy would get the (fully equipped) medical attention he needed . . . and I would end up answering questions for a lot of cops.

Not good.

I hadn’t even realized I’d punched the gas until I felt the gravel give way under the tires and the truck lurch toward the open road.

He slumped against the window as I careened out of the parking lot and onto the highway. The closest medical facility was in Bernard, about seventy miles up the road. As we neared the town limits, I passed the Lucky Traveler Motel, wishing we had time to stop and pick up my clothes and medical bag. But nearly everyone in the bar knew where I lived. The SUV driver would only have to ask a few people in the crowd that gathered to roast marshmallows around my immolated car and he’d find me in about ten minutes. For that matter, he could have been following us at that moment. Somehow, that made my spare contact-lens case and stethoscope seem less significant.

“Mister?” I said, shaking his shoulder, wincing as I noticed the blood seeping through his shirt. Gunshot wounds to the abdomen usually meant perforated major organs and damaged blood vessels, but his blood loss was minimal. I held out hope, though I knew that that wasn’t necessarily a good sign. There could be some complication or an exit wound I wasn’t aware of. I pulled my apron out of my bag and pressed the green canvas against his belly. He groaned, opening his burnt-chocolate eyes and blinking at me, as if he was trying to focus on my face but couldn’t quite manage it.

“You,” he said, squinting at me. “I know you.”

I swallowed, focusing on the situation at hand instead of the instinctual panic those words sent skittering up my spine. “No, I’d remember you, I’m sure. Just hold on, okay? I’m going to get you to the clinic in Bernard. Do you think you could stay awake for me?”

He shook his head. “No doctors.”

I supposed this would be a bad time to tell him I was a doctor.

“Not that bad. No doctors,” he ground out, glaring at me. I scowled right back. His face split into a loopy smirk. “Pretty.”

His head thunked back against the seat rest, which I supposed signaled the end of our facial-expression standoff.

And now that I had time to study said face, I could appreciate the shaggy black hair, eyes so intensely brown they were almost black, and cheekbones carved from granite. His lips were wide and generous and probably pretty tempting when they weren’t curled back over his teeth in pain like that.

“Please,” he moaned, batting his hand against my shoulder, weakly flexing his fingers around it.

Well, damn, I’d always been a sucker for a man who kept pretty manners intact while bleeding.

“Fine,” I shot back. “Where do you want to go?”

But he’d already passed out.

“And she was never heard from again,” I muttered.

A few miles later, my passenger stopped bleeding, which could mean that he’d started to clot . . . or that he’d gone into shock and died. My optimism had reached its limit for the evening.

Keeping an eye on the road, I pressed my fingers over his carotid and detected a slow but steady pulse. I took a deep breath and tried to focus. I’d been through so much worse. It didn’t make sense to panic now. How had I gotten myself into this? I’d worked so hard to avoid this kind of trouble. I’d kept my head down, stayed low profile. And here I was, driving around in a possibly stolen truck with a possibly dead body slumped over in the passenger seat. If I’d had one operating brain cell in my head, I would have run screaming into the bar the minute I heard the men arguing in the parking lot. But no, I had to help the injured stray, because living with the less-than-civic-minded side of humanity over the past few years had apparently taught me nothing.

I saw a sign ahead for Sharpton. Since he didn’t want to go to the clinic, I’d turned off the main highway and stuck to the older, less-traveled state routes. I tapped the brakes, afraid I would miss some vital piece of information hidden between the words SHARPTON and 20 MILES. As the truck slowed, the big guy slumped forward and snorted as his head smacked against the dashboard.

Good. Dead people do not snort. That was my qualified medical opinion.

“Hey, big guy?” I said loudly, shaking his shoulder. “Mister?”

He snorted again but did not wake up. I laughed, practically crying with relief. I gently shook my . . . passenger? Patient? Hostage? What was I going to do with him? He didn’t want a doctor, he said. But as much as I needed a vehicle, I didn’t have it in me to just leave him on the side of the road somewhere and drive off.

Just over the next rise in the road, I saw a sign for the Last Chance Motel, which seemed both ominous and appropriate. I took a deep breath through my nose and let it slowly expand my lungs. By the time I exhaled, I’d already formed my plan. At the faded pink motel sign, I turned into the lot and parked in front of the squat, dilapidated building. There were two cars in the lot, including the one in front of the office, which seemed to double as the manager’s quarters.

I reached toward the passenger seat and gently shook the big guy’s shoulder. His breathing was deep and even. As carefully as I could, I raised the hem of his bloodied shirt and gasped. The bullet wound, just under his ribs on his left side, seemed too small for such a recent injury. The edges of the wound were a healthy pink. And the bullet seemed to be lodged there in his skin.

I pulled away, scooting across the bench seat. That . . . wasn’t normal.

Calm down, I ordered myself. There’s no reason to panic. This is good news.

Maybe some weird act of physics had kept the bullet from penetrating deeply in the first place, I reasoned. I hadn’t gotten a good look at the wound while I was playing action hero in a dark parking lot. In my panic, it must have looked much worse than it was. Either way, the wound looked almost manageable now.

“Just hold on tight,” I told him, placing my hand on his shoulder again. He leaned into my touch, trying to nuzzle his cheek against my fingers. “Uh, I’ll be right back.”

It would appear that I was footing the bill for this little slice of heaven. I couldn’t reach his wallet, as it was in his pocket, firmly situated under his butt. I had just enough cash in my purse (a twenty and a few lonely singles) to cover one night. After that, I was dead in the water. The rest of my cash had been stashed behind a dresser in my motel room near Emerson’s.

I jumped out of the truck and tried to look calm and normal as I walked into the motel’s dingy little office and saw its creepy-as-hell occupant. The hotel seemed to have run a bizarrely specific Internet ad that read, “Wanted: semiskilled applicant with off-putting sex-predator vibe and lax standards in personal hygiene.”

And this guy was no exception. It took no less than three refusals of a “room tour” from the night manager before I was permitted to trade a portion of my precious cash supply for a little plastic tag attached to the oldest freaking room key I had ever seen.

“Two beds, right?” I asked, taking the key.

He shook his head, leering at me. “Single rooms only. We like to stay cozy here.”

“What if a family of four needs a room for the night?”

“It’s never come up.”

“Is there a pharmacy anywhere around here?” I asked.

“In town, about four miles down the road. Opens in the morning, around eight,” he said. “But if you’re feeling poorly, I have something in my room that might perk you up.”

I gave him my patented “dead face,” turned on my heel, and made a mental note to prop a chair against the outside door once I got to the room.

I opened the passenger-side door and saw that the big guy had managed to sit up and had his head resting on the seat back. He was snoring steadily. I spotted a bulky duffel bag in the backseat of the cab and threw it over my shoulder. I unlocked the room door, tossed the bag inside, and steeled myself for the task of hauling his unconscious ass into the room. Careful to keep his bloodied side away from the manager’s window, I hoisted his arm over my shoulder in a sort of ill-advised fireman’s carry and took slow, deliberate steps toward the open door. The movement seemed to reopen the wound, and I could feel blood seeping through my shirt. We made it through the door. I heard a distinct metallic plink. I looked down and saw that the bullet had rolled across the filthy carpet and hit the wall.

I meant to set him gently on the bed, but ended up flopping him across the bedspread. The rickety frame squealed in protest as he bounced, but he didn’t bat an eyelash. I huffed, leaning against the yellowed floral wallpaper to catch my breath. “Sorry. You’re heavier than you look.”

I locked the door and wedged the desk chair against the knob. The room was so outdated it was almost in style again but too dirty and neglected to be considered kitschy. The carpet was a dank, greenish-brown color that could only be described as phlegm. The bedspread, threadbare and nearly transparent in places, matched the shade.

I shook off the Norman Bates flashbacks and told myself it was just like any of the other crappy indigent motels I’d stayed at in any number of cities, and I hadn’t been stabbed in the shower yet. There was that one time a crazy lady kicked down my door and accused me of sleeping with her husband, but it turned out she’d meant to break into the room across the hall.

I turned back to the sleeping giant on the bed. The flannel shirt made an unpleasant ripping noise as I peeled it away, the dried blood making the stiff material adhere to his skin. The wound seemed even smaller now, the area around it a perfectly normal, healthy color. I pushed back from him, away from the bed, staring at the minuscule hole in his flesh.

This couldn’t be right.

Taking a step back, I knocked over his duffel and saw a bottle of Bactine spray sticking out of the partially opened zipper. I arched an eyebrow and pulled the bag open. “What the . . . ?”

Never mind having to run to a pharmacy. The bag was filled to the brim with well-used first-aid supplies. And several different types of exotic jerky. But not much in the way of clothes.

I glanced from the shrinking bullet hole to the enormous bag of meat treats with its distinct lack of clothes . . . and back to the bullet hole.

Oh, holy hell, this guy was a werewolf.

Books by Molly Harper

In the Land of Half-Moon Hollow

Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs

Nice Girls Don’t Date Dead Men

Nice Girls Don’t Live Forever

Nice Girls Don’t Bite Their Neighbors

Driving Mr. Dead

The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires

A Witch’s Handbook of Kisses and Curses

The Naked Werewolf Series

How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf

The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf

The Bluegrass Series

My Bluegrass Baby

Rhythm and Bluegrass

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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 © 2013 by Molly Harper White

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First Pocket Star Books ebook edition October 2013

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ISBN 978-1-4767-0593-4