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I pulled on my earlobe, hunching around my clenched belly. “Well, they don’t want to bring me tea and biscuits. I’m doing everything I can and filling out police reports.” I was actually extremely frightened—I had an idea how well armed they were. “I’m going to change my name and move to adifferent state. I’ve already created a Limited Liability Cooperation to funnel money through without any hint of me attached. You won’t hear from me directly for a while, but I’ll figure out a point of contact. My lawyer, at the least.”
“Oh, dear Lord,” my mother said, fanning her face. “I don’t know about this. You’re moving away?”
I turned to stare out at the pool. “You’re right, Mama, it is too much. That damn video. I think…I’ll go back to college.”
“Oh, honey.” Mama put her arms around me, sniffling on tears. My daddy walked over and hugged us both. “I’m gonna miss you so much.”
They stayed for another four days. We argued every night about them canceling their cruise. “No, you’re going,” I said for the hundredth time, the day before they were scheduled to leave. Then I sat up, smiling into my mama’s frowning face. “And we’re going to make them all think I’m in that car with you.” That turned the tide.
Inside their SUV with its tinted windows, we created a fairly convincing stuffed hoodie that could pass for a hunched over and miserable humanoid in their back seat. It even had a blonde wig peeping out and an old pair of my big sunglasses. We also prepared a press release, approved by my lawyer, explaining that we were leaving and answering some of the media questions that had been shouted at us daily.
My parents left. I’m not going to try and sugarcoat it. I was a mess. I cried in the back of the dark house, sitting in a corner next to a dim night-light, staring at my laptop and watching the footage from the security cameras my daddy had installed. Made me think of my dead husband filming me, and I cried harder.
Nothing much happened for the first hour, the paparazzi people calling our bluff. Then a couple of the cars drove off. I was as quiet as a mouse all night. By morning, the sidewalk was empty.
The next day I sat out on the back patio and stared absently at the greenbelt behind the sparkling pool. Leave Texas? Go north, to even colder winters and dreary gray rain?
Oregon was the last place anyone would look for me. A best friend of mine, named Amber Brown, was at the school I was applying to up there. We’d been pageant buddies, but she’d lived in a completely different part of Austin and had gone to a different school.
Here’s the part I didn’t want to admit to, even to myself. An ex-boyfriend of mine was a quarterback at that Oregon school as well. We’d dated through high school, and I still had a tender feeling for him—well, a horny feeling anyway.
Oregon was green, which I was craving after a hot dry Texas summer, and remote enough to disappear in. Plus, there wasn’t any sales tax, and I liked the sound of that. What can I say, cheap habits never die, even when you inherit your evil dead husband’s mega-bucks.
Much of Josh’s complicated estate was tied up in court. Not to mention the fact that you can’t easily sell a giant log cabin ranch, notorious for the death of the previous owner, with the snap of your fingers.
Fortunately, I’d been managing Josh’s money hidey holes, filtered through nameless LLCs and offshore accounts. I didn’t know about all of it, because he’d been sending money to his band of terrorists behind my back. All the above-board money, he’d tossed in my lap to deal with. I’d learned a lot.
Here’s my weakness: I hate being alone. I need people daily, and if I was going to cast myself out on my lonesome, I had to do something. I regretted missing out on college. Buying a big house, where I could comfortably live with other students, was what I’d come up with. I had a purchase in motion. A house with a pool.
That evening, Hank wandered out into his mother’sbackyard next door. I saw him from the shadows of the back patio. He stared across the fence at my parents’ house with his arms crossed.
I stood up and waved. He startled as I put my finger up against my lips. I crept down to the bottom of the yard, then stood behind a tree to talk to him through the wrought iron fence.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m glad I saw you. Can you come over and talk to me for a bit? I don’t want anyone to know I’m still here, so could you climb over the fence?”
He huffed. “All right. I’ll check on my mother and grab a ladder.”
I stared into his solemn dark eyes. Eye contact with Hank always traveled straight down my spine. “Still mad at me?”
He glared. “Always.” He rubbed the back of his head. “Nah, I needed a push. I had a long stretch at the station, then spent my free time breaking up with Clarissa. She thought we should keep things the way they were. Her living in my house and dating my cousin when I wasn’t around. Makes perfect sense to her. She pointed out that she does the grocery shopping and keeps the house tidy. When I called her parents, she lost her temper. She’s still at my house now, actually. I’m taking a breather.”
I leaned toward him. “If it wouldn’t cause a tabloid sensation, I’d storm over there and throw her out for you.”
He shook his head, closing his eyes. “Go back to that patio before we break your cover. See you soon.”
I had a little pep in my step. Leaving without saying goodbye to Hank had been eating at me. I didn’t want to leave him at all. Whatever was happening between us was like a flower growing in a crack in the concrete—untimely, doomed, and beautiful.
Hank came out with two ladders, one for each side of thefence. He scanned the greenbelt while he was up high, his face hard. As he walked toward me, my heart pounded. Shriveled up and small as it was, he cracked it right open.
He sat on the end of my lounge chair. “I thought you’d gone on that cruise with your parents.”
“No. They needed a break from my new fame.”
He leaned into my foot. I realized he was a touch person. “I bet you have a plan. Spill it.”
“I have to go.”
His head jerked up. “Where?”
