I Scream, You Scream Page 2

  Brittanie pouted, but Wayne reached for the contract. “Get me a pen so we can sign this thing.”

  I looked over at my display freezer, filled with tubs of ice cream—rosewater pistachio, raspberry mascarpone, peanut butter fudge. My own recipes, mixed by my own hands, in custom-made vertical batch freezers I’d designed myself. If I couldn’t pay the bills and those freezers went kaput, my heart would melt right along with the banana caramel chip.

  They say if you lie down with dogs, you’ll get up with fleas. As I clicked my ballpoint and reached for the sheaf of contracts, I tried to pretend I didn’t feel an itch coming on.

  chapter 2

  “I can’t decide if you’re a saint or just the ordinary type of martyr.” Bree clicked her tongue against her teeth as she slipped the scrunchy from her hair and tried to finger fluff some life back into her flaming red mane.

  I locked the service door and rattled it a few times just to be sure it was solid. I wasn’t worried about burglars—I didn’t have any cash in the store, the equipment wasn’t worth much to anyone but me, and the ice cream was tough to steal—but I didn’t have enough to cover my deductible if high school kids decided to break in and trash the place.

  “How about ‘none of the above’?” I grumbled. “Cash is cash, Bree. So unless you have a little nest egg tucked away somewhere that you want to pony up for the greater good, you can just put a sock in it.”

  Bree grasped the neck of her T-shirt and fanned herself with the damp material. The calendar said it was October, but the Texas summer was having one last ninety-degree hoorah. Still, I couldn’t seem to lure people in to buy my ice cream.

  “Sorry, darlin’,” Bree said. “I’m broke.”

  No surprise there.

  Technically, Bree Michaels was my cousin, but since we were close in age, we were both only children, and we’d spent every childhood summer together, we ended up more like sisters. I stood up for Bree in four of her five weddings (number three was a spur-of-the-moment Vegas thing that didn’t last as long as Bree’s hangover), and I sorted through the rubble after each one ended.

  As a result, I was intimately familiar with the state of Bree’s finances. They were worse than mine. And while I managed to scrape together minimum wage for Alice and Kyle, Bree was basically working for free: theoretically, she was in for a portion of profits, but thirty percent of nothing was still nothing.

  Bree stuck her thumb and middle finger in her mouth and let loose a screeching whistle. “Yo, Alice. Let’s hustle.”

  Alice Anders and Kyle Mason were deep in conversation at the end of the alley. Kyle straddled his bike, ready to fly north up Lantana to Ravenswood and his parents’ Brady-era split-level ranch. Alice, Bree’s daughter by husband number two, leaned against the back wall of Erma’s Fry by Night Diner, her body canted awkwardly, as though she could just as easily bolt down the alley as throw herself into Kyle’s gangly adolescent arms.

  Kyle and Alice’s relationship was every bit as awkward as my precocious niece’s stance. Alice took after me more than she did Bree, a goody-goody from tip to tail, but spooky smart. At sixteen, she had a full-ride scholarship at Dickerson College. I just knew she’d get out of Dalliance and set the world on fire.

  God willing, Kyle hoped to graduate from Dalliance High at the end of the school year, but a lot depended on the goodwill of his history teacher and his ability to pay restitution for a summer mailbox demolition spree. I was the only sucker in town willing to hire him, sullen attitude and all, but at the pitiful wage I could afford to give him, he’d still be making payments for those mailboxes with his Social Security checks.

  Kyle and Alice had nothing in common but a powerful fascination. They alternated between making cow eyes at each other and vicious sniping.

  Alice’s head turned in our direction. “Fine,” she snapped, contempt dripping from the single syllable. Genius or not, the child was a teenager, after all.

  Beside me, Bree sighed. “That’s trouble, right there,” she said, nodding her head at the youngsters. Alice took a few hesitant steps away from Kyle, but you could tell she found it difficult to break free of his hormonal gravity.

  I sighed. “Why should Alice be immune from the family curse?”

  Bree snorted. “Amen.”

  We joked about the curse a lot, usually over margaritas or hot fudge sundaes. It wasn’t anything tragic, like lunacy or crib death. Just a penchant for picking bad men.

  Grandma Peachy had two daughters by Grandpa Clem before he got sent to the federal pen for selling phony war bonds. I was eight when Mama learned about Daddy’s other family up in Tulsa. Bree didn’t know exactly who her daddy was, but none of the options was particularly appealing.

  Everyone thought I had broken the curse when I broke away from my hell-raising high school boyfriend, Finn Harper, and married the staid, upstanding Wayne Jones. But then Wayne came home with the clap and a line of bull a mile long, and it was clear the curse had caught me, after all.

  When Alice finally schlumped up, we turned down the alley and headed to Jessamine Street, which would carry us south toward our home. Alice and Bree took the lead, Bree slinging her arm over her daughter’s skinny shoulders. Alice shuffled along, hands thrust deep in her pockets, hunched over as though her mother’s arm were a yoke over her neck. I followed, marveling at the complexity of mother-daughter relationships as we made our weary way home.

  “Home” was the house I’d bought after Wayne and I separated. Tired of developer-designed Mc-Mansions, with their steep, hip roofs and bland neutral palettes, I strong-armed Wayne into buying me a cute little arts-and-crafts bungalow in the historic district near downtown Dalliance. Wayne paid cash for the house in lieu of alimony. It seemed like a great idea at the time. Bree was recently divorced, and she and Alice were crashing in a friend’s spare bedroom. The historic district was within walking distance of Dickerson College, where Alice had just been admitted, and so it seemed like fate that we should all move into the old house together. But then the main sewer line collapsed, squirrels infested our attic, and the subflooring in the bathroom rotted clean through. After a few months, a McMansion and an alimony check started looking pretty good.

  Our little procession made its way down Jessamine, away from the courthouse square, past a few silent storefronts. As the commercial hub of Dalliance gave way to the early-twentieth-century homes of the historic district, I felt the tension in my shoulders unwind. The post oaks cast gnarled shadows in the moonlight, and the bitter scent of charcoal grills and citronella candles lay heavy in the air. From somewhere a few blocks away, in the general direction of Dickerson College, I could hear the deep, throbbing bass of dance music. At half-past nine, the nightlife was changing shifts, with family barbecues giving way to fraternity parties.

  As we rounded the corner onto Waxahachie, Bree and Alice came up so short, I nearly tripped over them.

  “Speaking of the curse . . . ,” Bree muttered.

  There on my own front steps, just inside the circle of dim light cast by the porch fixture, sat my very own bad-boy heartthrob, Finn Harper. In the bright light of day, I’m sure I would have noticed threads of silver at his temples, a softening along his jawline, a net of fine lines around his eyes. But in the mellow glow of the porch light, he looked like the Finn of my adolescent dreams: a loose-limbed, lanky boy with a swoop of dark hair falling in his eyes.

  He stood when he saw us, dusting off his khakis. That was new. My Finn wore only ratty jeans and T-shirts, not khakis and collared shirts.

  He nodded a greeting. “Tally. Bree. Good to see you.” His gaze settled on Alice, squinting at her as though she were one of those optical illusion pictures that look like a bunch of random dots until your eyes suddenly get the trick and you see the giraffe or whatever.

  Bree rested her hands on Alice’s shoulders. “Hey, Finn. This is my daughter, Alice.” She ruffled Alice’s strawberry bob. “Alice, honey, this is Fi—this is Mr. Harper, an old friend of your aunt
Tally’s.”

  Alice sized up the stranger with all the warmth of late-December creek water.

  “Nice to meet you, Alice.”

  She dug one sneakered toe into the sidewalk. Finn’s wide mouth kicked up in a tiny smile.

  “Alice Marie Anders.” Bree barely whispered her daughter’s name, but the warning in her tone sounded as loud as a whip crack.

  Alice heaved a mighty sigh. “Nice to meet you, too, Mr. Harper.”

  Finn’s smile widened to a full-on grin. Then he turned that devilish grin on me. “How ya been, Tally?”

  “Fine.”

  What else could I say? That I was flat broke? That my husband had dumped me for a luscious piece of arm candy? That I was sweaty and sticky from mucking around in vats of ice cream, feeling like a total frump? I met the daring gaze of the one man who had ever made feel just a little bit dangerous, a little bit beautiful, feeling about as far from beautiful as a girl could get.

  Finn’s grin faded, and his straight, heavy eyebrows lowered. “Well. That’s good.” He glanced at Bree and Alice.

  “Right,” Bree said. “Come on, kiddo, let’s get inside and get cleaned up. I think I might have a brandied cherry in my brassiere.”

  “Mom,” Alice gasped, looking utterly mortified.

  “Lighten up, Saint Alice. Finn’s heard worse. From me, even.” Bree cocked her head and pouted her lips, her inner Southern siren coming to the fore. “Ain’t that right, sugar?”

  Honest, I couldn’t tell whose jaw fell farther, Finn’s or poor, prissy Alice’s.

  Bree laughed, a rich, throaty chuckle. “Nice to see you, Finn,” she said as she ushered her daughter up the steps. “You two behave.”

  I felt my face burning. If I’d been armed, Bree would have been in serious trouble right then.

  “So.” Finn bent to brush the dust from the second porch step, then held out a hand for me to sit. As I settled gingerly onto the step, Finn rested a hip on the concrete stoop.

  After an awkward minute or two of silence, Finn cleared his throat. “Sorry to drop by unannounced. I got your address from my mom’s Christmas card list. I, uh . . .” His voice trailed off, and he cleared his throat again. “I’m moving back to Dalliance.”

  A numbing warmth seeped through my veins until it felt as if my body had disappeared entirely.

  “Actually, I’ve already moved back. You know, my mom had a stroke last month.”

  “Yeah,” I said, though I couldn’t feel my lips move. “I heard. I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks. It’s her second. She needs help. So I’m back.”

  “Mmm.”

  “I got a job with the News-Letter.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Last I had seen Finn Harper, he was as pissed as hell and peeling out of the parking lot of the Tasty-Swirl. That was about two weeks before graduation. I’d heard, though, that he’d somehow made it to college; that he was working as a reporter someplace up north.

  “Tally, listen. I wanted to see you because . . .” He trailed off again. “Look, we can’t avoid each other in a town this small. I just didn’t want to bump into you out there”—he waved his hand vaguely—“without first stopping by to say ‘hey.’ ”

  I met his gaze, hoping he couldn’t see the utter desolation in my heart. “Hey,” I whispered.

  His mouth softened. “Hey.”

  We sat for another moment, the silence not quite so painful this time.

  “I wanted to let you know I was back,” Finn said, “because I’m supposed to cover the big to-do at Wayne’s Weed and Seed next weekend. I don’t know what you’ve said to Wayne about me, and it just seemed like a good idea to give you some warning.” He smiled. “I probably should have called. I don’t imagine Wayne will be too pleased to find his wife’s ex hanging out on his front porch.”

  The sense of unreality returned in a dizzying wave.

  “Wayne and I got divorced.” The words came from far away. It didn’t even sound like my voice.

  “When?” There was a note of challenge in Finn’s voice, as if he didn’t believe me.

  “Not quite a year ago. January eighteenth.”

  “Your birthday?”

  “Yep. Happy birthday to me.”

  “That was just after my mom’s first stroke. I guess she didn’t think to tell me.”

  I shrugged.

  “So you won’t even be at the Weed and Seed thing.” Finn sounded relieved, and I tried not to let that bother me.

  “Actually, I will. I’m catering dessert. I bought the ice-cream place on the square.”

  “Dave’s Dippery?”

  “Yeah. Dave moved to San Antonio to be near his grandkids. It’s mine now. Remember the A-la-mode.”

  “Cute.”

  I wanted to shrivel up and die. It was cute. Cute like gingham curtains and kitten posters. To a hard-nosed reporter from the big city, I must have sounded like a total bumpkin.

  “So I guess I’ll see you there after all,” he said. He straightened and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I should get going. Mom goes to bed pretty early. But it was good seeing you, Tally.”

  Good seeing you too, Finn. That’s what goody-goody Tally would say. But it would be a lie. It was excruciating seeing Finn again, knowing that the girl he loved was gone forever, all her promise and possibility reduced to the dull certainty of my life. I just couldn’t force the words through my lips.

  “Give your mom my best.”

  “Will do. G’night.” With a hitch of his shoulders, he ambled down the walkway and climbed into a white Jeep.

  As he pulled away from the curb, I rested my face in my hands.

  Dear God. Finn Harper was back in Dalliance. Worse, he’d be there next weekend to see me standing beside Miss Fancy Britches Brittanie, who’d probably be wearing a grass skirt and a coconut bra, while I wore a stupid Remember the A-la-mode T-shirt and pineapple sauce in my hair.

  If I got through that dang picnic without taking a life—or losing my own—it would be a blessed miracle.

  chapter 3

  In a fit of desperation, I let Bree give me highlights the day before the Weed and Seed luau. Here’s a rule to live by: never let a woman who calls her own breasts “the twins” come near your head with a bottle of peroxide, especially when she’s been knocking back margaritas. By the time she was done, my chestnut hair looked like the hide of an electrocuted zebra.

  “Damn, Tally. You look like you been rode hard and put up wet.”

  I straightened from the folding table I was setting up, my hand still wrapped around the steel tube support brace, and squinted hard at Wayne. A snappish quip tickled my tongue, but I wasn’t sure who I was talking to that day—the man whose toothbrush leaned against mine for seventeen years, the man who shamed me before every soul I knew, or the man who was signing my paycheck—so I swallowed it down and kept quiet.

  “Brittanie got these shirts, and she wants you all to wear ’em.” Wayne extended an arm, lime and fuchsia Hawaiian shirts hanging from each finger. “More branding,” he added.

  I sighed. “Sure, Wayne. Why not?” I couldn’t look much more ridiculous, and maybe people would think my hairdo was intentional, part of some theme-party getup.

  “How’s this work?” Wayne asked. “It’s still hotter than h-e-double-toothpicks, so how are you going to serve all that ice cream without it melting?”

  I perked up a bit. I was pretty proud of my plan, formulated after a consultation with Deena Silver, owner of the Silver Spoon, Dalliance’s most sought-after catering company, and the person responsible for the rest of the luau food.

  “I actually scooped and packed all the ice cream last night. I got these disposable plastic plates shaped like seashells, and I put three perfect pearls of ice cream on each one. They have lids, so I could seal them up and stack them in the freezer. Then, I used little six-ounce to-go cups for the topping. So everything is already portioned and packaged.”

  I pulled one of the plastic ramekins filled with tidbits o
f fresh pineapple and neon green coconut cream out of the cooler at my feet. “I even have a half dozen with no pineapple, just for you. See, they have the red lids, so the servers don’t get them mixed up. It’s not the most elegant way to serve, but it’s not bad. And this way the ice cream stays frozen, and the fruit and coconut cream stay neat, clean, and bug free. We’ll be setting out bowls of toasted coconut and macadamia nuts on the tables, so folks can help themselves.”

  Wayne nodded along with my presentation, his lips pressed in a thin line of concentration. “Tally, to tell you the truth, I didn’t want to hire you for the picnic.” He held up a placating hand. “No hard feelings; I was just worried that you would get in over your head. I mean, you really dove into this business without a net.”

  I smiled a bit at Wayne’s mixed metaphor. Big-city folks might mistake his bumbling good-ol’-boy persona for stupidity, but in Dalliance, Texas—“Little D” to the “Big D” of Dallas—it served him well. It fostered an immediate sense of trust in his clients. Early in our marriage, Wayne worked hard to nurture that down-home charm, but now it came as naturally as breathing. In fact, sometimes I forgot he hadn’t always been an extra from The Andy Griffith Show, that he’d once been clever and sweetly sensitive and almost urbane.

  “But I gotta say, I’m real impressed with what you’ve done. I wasn’t blowin’ smoke the other day. That was some damn fine ice cream. And it looks like you’ve got a handle on the more practical end of things, too. I just didn’t know you had it in you.”

  I didn’t bother reminding Wayne that I had helped him run a wildly successful lawn-care business for years. Granted, I never drew a salary, but I helped juggle shift requests and changes for two dozen workers, drafted employee manuals, and waded through all the tax schedules and work-sheets small businesses have to deal with. Back in the day, he even trusted me to fill out and file the incorporation papers for Wayne’s Weed and Seed.