She Drives Me Crazy. Leslie Kelly

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СКАЧАТЬ she figured she’d best be sure Emmajean didn’t take offense to Cora being in her house. Particularly when she started looking through her recipe box.

      “Drat,” she muttered, realizing the other woman must have hidden her best recipes, or memorized then burned them.

      Cora had tried that once, when she was having chest pains and thought she was dying. When the doctor’d said it was just gas, and she realized she’d forgotten to memorize her red slaw recipe before she’d burned it, Cora had fumed. She’d tried for days to re-create it until Bob swore the next time she put a helping of red slaw in front of him, she’d be wearing it atop her head.

      Wanting to take one more peek around for Emmajean’s recipes, Cora opened a drawer in the old-style rolltop desk in Emmajean’s bedroom. Funny, everything in there was all jumbled up, not neat like the rest of the house. Like someone had looked through it.

      Cora shrugged off the thought and began to dig through the drawer, which was full of memories. Photos. Letters. Pictures of a little girl, probably the scandalous brat who hadn’t bothered coming to her grandma’s funeral. There were postcards, newspaper clippings and flyers with Emma Jean Frasier’s name on them. And, near the very bottom, a glossy color brochure.

      Cora Dillon sucked in a shocked breath and stared at the brochure in her hand. “Dirty pictures,” she muttered.

      Emmajean Frasier’s granddaughter had peddled nasty pictures of naked people, and statues of even more naked people, at some New York gallery that pretended the pornography was art.

      “Well, wait until the town of Joyful learns Emmajean Frasier’s granddaughter went off to sell dirty pictures.” Considering the scandal, the details of which she’d finally remembered, they’d likely not be too surprised.

      She wasted no time in spreading the word, and the game of “whisper down the lane” was well underway by lunchtime.

      By 1:00 p.m., the women at Sylvie Stottlemyer’s bridge club were tittering over it. They gleefully repeated the scandal of May 1995 involving Emmajean Frasier’s granddaughter as they trumped and made their rubbers.

      By two, the guys working on the line at the machine parts factory north of town were speculating on precisely what kind of pictures had been involved. Whether they were X-rated or triple-X. And whether they might still be available on the Internet.

      By three, the two different rumors about Emma Jean and the billboard had caught up with one another and been mixed together in the great seething cauldron of gossip. Now things began to make sense…because the club advertised on the billboard was being built on old Emmajean’s land.

      By four, the term “gone off to sell dirty pictures” had been replaced by the term “gone off to make dirty pictures.”

      And by 5:00 p.m., the whole town of Joyful knew with titillated certainty that the person building the new club was Emma Jean Frasier—aka the porn star.

      

      EMMA JEAN FRASIER hit Joyful late Friday afternoon, not sure whether to be glad her long trip had ended, or sorry she couldn’t just keep on driving.

      Florida sounded good. West Palm. The Keys.

      “Not happening,” she muttered. Joyful had been her destination, and Joyful was where she’d arrived.

      At least no one pointed. Nobody ducked their heads together to whisper. She felt pretty sure she didn’t see any tar being boiled, feathers being plucked or big scarlet letters being cut out for prominent display on her chest. Not that they did that kind of thing anymore.

      She hoped.

      Glancing at herself in the rearview mirror, she smothered a groan. Sixteen solid hours of driving with the top down under the blazing sun, or the humid, cloud-filled night sky, played absolute hell on a three hundred dollar color job. Even if the color job had been done by Floyds on Fifth in New York.

      “No more three hundred dollar color jobs for you, babe,” she told her sun-pinkened reflection. No more lunches at trendy New York restaurants. No expensive cooking classes she could try, but inevitably fail due to her notorious inability in the kitchen. No more trips upstate in the autumn, or wine-tasting clubs or sponsoring shows for promising young artists. No parties in her pretty Manhattan apartment, either.

      Gone. Done. Finito. Over and out, with a single hour-long meeting with her attorney.

      “Flat broke,” she whispered, unable to hear her own voice.

      The summer air rushing over the windshield stung her eyes, bringing a harsh tear to them. It’s only the wind, she told herself. She certainly wasn’t crying over stolen money. Nor over lost jobs, SEC investigations or worthless stock.

      Emma had received the invitation to return to Joyful two weeks ago, on the very day she’d found out. An interesting twist, being invited to come to Joyful for her high school reunion the same day she’d learned her only remaining asset was her grandmother’s house in that same town.

      She didn’t know if she’d have ever returned if she’d had any other choice. Not for the silly teenage reasons that had driven her away—and kept her away for several years—but simply because there was no one to come home to anymore.

      Grandma Emmajean was gone. Just the house remained, not the home.

      Her grandmother’s death was a blow from which Emma was still recovering. She’d been unable to face the memories in the warm, sunny-yellow house the old woman had left to her. Her parents had handled all the legal paperwork surrounding Emmajean’s will, and had arranged for her property to be managed by a Realtor in town. Emma had tried not to think about it since.

      “Better think about it now,” she mused as she saw more and more that looked familiar to her.

      Her foot lifted slightly off the gas pedal as she spotted the old lumber mill on the outskirts of town. Just west of here, near the highway leading down to Atlanta, would be the old pecan orchard her grandmother had owned, the orchard that was now Emma’s. Her heart clenched. She wasn’t quite up to visiting the orchard yet.

      She’d soon come to the Chat-n-Chew. The combination gas station and restaurant—where Emma and her high school friends used to try to buy beer—sat right on the main road. She decided to stop, needing to fuel up and grab a cold drink. She also needed to deal with the memories hitting her from every direction, some eliciting a gentle smile but most bringing a hint of sadness for their association with Emmajean.

      The blaze of sunlight sent a shimmer of heat reflecting above the blacktop road, and Emma’s eyes grew a little hazy. The tears lurking behind her lids began to spill onto her cheeks.

      She was home. In Joyful. But the one person who epitomized the meaning of the word “home” wasn’t here to welcome her.

      She blinked rapidly. Fatigue from being behind the wheel for so long was making her overly emotional. Shrugging her shoulders, she ran a quick hand through the tangled mass of short curls surrounding her face and took a deep breath. The air was warm and thick, redolent with the smells she’d always acquaint with the South—earth, pine and a faint wisp of fruit from some nearby orchard. Her tears dried almost immediately.

      Before reaching the Chat-n-Chew, Emma suddenly remembered the little park, down a gravel road that cut back to the local grange building. Almost holding her breath, СКАЧАТЬ