in the same salon—even if it’s only for the interim.
Moisture beads on my forehead, my upper lip, the small of my back. It’s warm for February—but that’s Florida for you—and my Dolce & Gabbanas suddenly feel like suffocating plastic wrap.
I don’t need someone collecting business cards for me. I can get my own dates. If and when I’m ready to do so.
Feeling trapped inside the four walls of chez Tess Mulligan—well, her car, anyway—finding a place of my own leaps to the top of my mental priority list.
Mama cranks the engine, and I open the car door and buckle myself in for a bumpy ride.
As she slips the gearshift into Reverse, her nails, the same red as her car, click on the metal shaft. Then she stretches her right arm over the seatback. Her compact little body lists toward me as she looks over her shoulder before cranking the wheel with her left hand and maneuvering the car out of the parking spaces.
In the graying garage light, I see the deep etchings time has sketched on her face. They seem more pronounced, shadowed, in this half light. At this angle, the crepey skin of her throat looks loose and paper-thin. In this quiet moment, I see beneath the bold, brassiness of her facade down to the heart and soul. She looks older, mortal, vulnerable. Funny, how these things go unnoticed during the daily razzmatazz of the Tess Mulligan show—until the camera fades and the lights go down and she’s not performing for an audience.
I swallow the harsh words sizzling in my mouth and wash them down with a little compassion. Even though the zingers stick in my throat, I turn the subject to a more amiable topic.
“How’s Kally?”
Mama’s jaw tightens. She shifts forward on the seat, her posture rod-straight, and shrugs.
Kally and I have known each other since we were in diapers. Once, she was my best friend in the world. Chet’s, too. In fact, she and this guy, Jake Brumly, and Chet and I used to be known as the fearsome foursome in high school.
Then we grew up.
She and Jake broke up. Chet and I got married and moved away. I’d like to say life just got in the way, but it’s not that simple. In fact, it got downright ugly—all because of money.
It’s awful. It really is.
About four or five years ago, Chet told her we’d invest in this business of hers, this artsy—or so I’ve heard, I’ve never seen it—coffee shop called Lady Marmalade’s. As much as we both adored Kally and as much as Chet wanted everyone back home to believe we were living the beautiful life in L.A., we didn’t have that kind of extra cash. I had to be the heavy and say no.
She got mad when we pulled out. Just like that. Can you imagine?
Then she had a kid and our paths sort of forked off in two different directions before we could make amends.
I suppose I didn’t help matters.
I’ll admit it, I was a little jealous when she got pregnant. Okay, I was a lot jealous because she had the one thing I desperately wanted and couldn’t have. A baby.
I would’ve traded all the Hollywood glitz and glam, all the movies I worked on, all the parties and elbow-rubbing with the stars for one precious little baby.
But when you’re infertile, all the bargaining in the world doesn’t make a difference.
And Kally wasn’t even married. Still isn’t as far as I know. If you don’t think that raised a few Sago Beach brows?
Mama is still ticked at Kally. Not because she had a baby out of wedlock. Because come to find out, even after I put my foot down about not lending her the money, Chet went behind my back and funded her business. In the aftermath of his death, I discovered Chet had a checking account I knew nothing about. Through it, I followed a messy paper trail of canceled checks made out to Kally. He was funneling her the money that was supposed to go into our 401K. Four freakin’ years of this. I had no idea the money wasn’t going where it was supposed to go. Chet was the financier of our relationship, paid the bills, set the budget—which is why I was flabbergasted when he suggested we invest in Kally’s business. He knew better than I that we didn’t have the extra cash.
This is not a good thing to uncover just weeks after your husband dies. This secret felt like I’d discovered they were having an affair—thank God for that twenty-seven-hundred-mile chastity belt. Or I might have suspected something, which was stupid because in all the years we’d known each other, never ever did I pick up one iota of a vibe that they might be interested in a little hanky panky.
It was too much to handle all at once, these two disasters. It’s not like I could get answers from Chet, and Kally was pretty tightlipped when I asked her to explain.
Mama went totally ballistic. She called up Kally, read her the riot act and asked her how she could take that money from us? I suppose she felt Kally had betrayed her by virtue of betraying me and took it doubly hard because Kally had always been like another daughter to her. Especially after Kally’s mother, Caro, passed away, gosh…not too long before Chet started giving Kally the money.
Mama went off, insisting Kally give me a stake in Lady Marmalade’s since the money that kept the place afloat should’ve gone to take care of me after my husband’s death.
For the record, I want nothing to do with that coffee shop. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll go five miles out of my way to avoid it, which might not be so hard since she chose to set up shop over in Cocoa Beach.
I’ve had months to make my peace with the situation. And I have, for the most part. Really.
Kally and I haven’t talked. But I’m at peace. Which is a good thing since I’m bound to run in to her now that I’m back.
All I know is if Kally Fuller could take the money and still look at herself in the mirror—Well, I suppose she’s ventured farther down that divergent path than I realized she was capable.
As my mother nears the line of tollbooths, she grabs her purse and roots around in it, alternately looking down at her lap and back at the road.
“Here, Mama, let me pay for this. How much is it?” I unbuckle my purse for my wallet.
She pulls out a twenty and waves me off. “I got it.”
“I wish you’d at least let me pay the toll. You drove all the way over here to get me—”
“I’m your mother. Of course I’d do that. You just hush.” She rolls down her window and hands the toll-taker the money.
I sink into my seat, twelve years old again, my mother running the show.
CHAPTER 3
I’d forgotten how pretty natural Florida is this time of year. When the cycle of afternoon rains cooperate and show up on schedule, everything is lush and green and tropical. Crepe Myrtles, hibiscus and oleanders dot the highway in a kaleidoscope of color.
The scenery washes over me like a soothing bath as the black ribbon of flat Florida highway slices through the landscape, eventually reaching the subtropical marshlands that bridge the city to the coast.
Silent
