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She ran to intercede, slipped in the gravel, and fell on Sunny, trapping Ted beneath them both. Spence took advantage of Ted’s temporary captivity and sprang to his feet. Meg watched with alarm as he drew his leg back to kick Ted in the head. With her own shriek of rage, she twisted to her side and slammed into him, knocking him off balance. As he fell, she grabbed Sunny by the back of her designer blouse. Ted would never hit a woman, but Meg possessed no such scruples.
Torie and Shelby Traveler eventually pulled Meg off a sobbing Sunny, but the town’s peace-loving mayor was out for blood, and it took three men to restrain him. He wasn’t the only one being held back. Meg’s mother, Skeet, Francesca, and the fire chief all had to work together to contain her father.
A vein throbbed in the side of Ted’s neck as he struggled to free himself so he could finish what he’d started. “You even think about going near her again, and you’ll regret it.”
“You’re crazy!” Spence shouted. “You’re all crazy!”
Ted’s lips thinned with contempt. “Get out of here.”
Spence snatched his hat from the ground. Oily hanks of black hair hung over his forehead. One of his eyes was beginning to swell shut, and his nose was bleeding. “This town always needed me more than I ever needed it.” He slapped his hat against his leg. “While you’re watching this place rot, Beaudine, think about what you gave up.” He slammed his hat on his head and gazed at Meg, his expression venomous. “Think about how much that nobody cost you.”
“Daddy . . .” Sunny’s dirty blouse was torn, she had a scraped arm and a scratch over her cheek, but he was too wrapped up in his own rage to give her the comfort she craved.
“You could have had it all,” he said, blood trickling from his nostril. “And you gave it up for a lying bitch.”
Only her mother throwing herself at her father kept him from leaping on Spence, while the men holding Ted back nearly lost their struggle to contain him. Dallie sauntered forward, his eyes steel blue chips. “I advise you to get out of here while you can, Spence, because all it’ll take from me is a nod, and those ol’ boys keeping Ted from finishing the job he started out to do are going to let him go.”
Spence took in the sea of hostile faces and began backing toward the cars. “Come on, Sunny,” he said with a bravado that didn’t ring true. “Let’s get out of this shithole.”
“You’re the loser, asshole!” Torie called out. “I could hit a five-iron better than you when I was in junior high. And, Sunny, you’re a stuck-up bitch.”
Father and daughter, sensing they could have an angry mob on their heels, rushed to their cars and threw themselves inside. As they drove away, one set of eyes after another landed on Meg. She felt their anger, saw their despair. None of this would ever have happened if she’d left town when they’d wanted her to.
Somehow she managed to keep her head up, even as she blinked back tears. Her exquisite mother, all six feet of her, began coming toward her, moving with the authority that had once carried her down the world’s greatest runways. The crowd’s attention had been so focused on the unfolding calamity that no one had noticed the strangers in their midst, but the Glitter Baby’s stripy blond hair, dramatic marking-pen eyebrows, and wide mouth made her instantly recognizable to everyone over thirty, and a buzz went up. Then Meg’s father moved to her mother’s side, and the buzz stopped as the onlookers tried to absorb the astonishing fact that the legendary Jake Koranda had stepped off the silver screen to walk among them.
Meg took them in with an unhappy combination of love and despair. How could someone as ordinary as herself be the offspring of these two magnificent creatures?
But her parents never got close to her because Ted had lost it. “Everybody get the hell out of here!” he exclaimed. “Everybody!” For some inexplicable reason, he included her parents in his proclamation. “You, too.”
Meg wanted nothing more than to leave and never come back, but she had no car, and she couldn’t bear the idea of riding back with her parents before she’d had a chance to pull herself together. Torie seemed to be her best option, and she cast a beseeching look in her direction only to have Ted’s arm shoot out. “You stay right where you are.”
Each word had a jagged edge and icy point. He wanted a final showdown, and after all this, he deserved it.
Her father took Te
d’s measure, then turned to her. “Do you have a car here?”
When she shook her head, he pulled out his keys and tossed them at her. “We’ll hitch a ride back to town and wait for you at the inn.”
One person after another began moving away. No one wanted to defy Ted, not even his mother. Francesca and Dallie led Meg’s parents to their Cadillac. As the cars began to leave, Ted walked toward the rusted sign, where he gazed out over the vast stretch of tainted land now stripped of all its future promise. His shoulders slumped. She’d done this to him. Not intentionally, but she’d done it all the same by staying in Wynette when every sign pointed to the absolute necessity of her leaving. Then she’d compounded her stupidity by falling so absurdly in love with the man least likely to love her back. Her self-indulgence had led to this moment where everything had fallen apart.
The sun hung low in the sky, etching his profile in fire. The last car disappeared, but it was as if she’d ceased to exist, and he didn’t move. When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she forced herself to go to him. “I am so sorry,” she whispered.
She lifted her hand to wipe the blood from the corner of his mouth, but he caught her wrist before she could touch him. “Was that hot enough for you?”
“What?”
“You think I don’t feel things.” His voice was hoarse with emotion. “That I’m some kind of robot.”
“Oh, Ted . . . That’s not what I meant.”
“Because you’re a drama queen, you’re the only one who’s allowed to have feelings, is that right?”
This wasn’t the conversation they needed to have. “Ted, I never meant for you to get caught up in this thing with Spence.”
“What was I supposed to do? Let him get away with assaulting you?”
“He didn’t exactly do that. I don’t honestly know what would have happened if Haley hadn’t shown up. He—”
