Part 5 (1/2)
She stood up and shoved her skirt down. ”How would you know?”
He let his gaze drift over her legs and smiled. ”Educated guess.”
She lunged for the corner of the mattress and somehow managed to gather enough traction to turn the awful thing and pull it back onto the box spring.
”Well done,” he said.
She pushed a spike of hair out of her eyes. ”You're a vindictive, cold-blooded psycho.”
”Harsh.”
”Am I the only person in the world who sees through your St. Ted routine?”
”Just about.”
”Look at you. Not even two weeks ago, Lucy was the love of your life. Now you barely seem to remember her name.” She kicked the mattress forward a few inches.
”Time heals.”
”Eleven days?”
He shrugged and wandered across the room to investigate the Internet connection. She stomped after him. ”Stop taking what happened out on me. It wasn't my fault that Lucy ran off.” Not entirely true, but close enough.
He squatted down to inspect the cable connection. ”Things were fine before you got here.”
”You only think they were.”
He reset the jack and rose to his feet. ”Here's the way I see it. For reasons only you know-although I have a fair idea what they are-you brainwashed a wonderful woman into making a mistake she'll have to live with for the rest of her life.”
”It wasn't a mistake. Lucy deserves more than you were prepared to give her.”
”You have no idea what I was prepared to give her,” he said as he headed for the door.
”Not your unbridled pa.s.sion, that's for sure.”
”Stop pretending you know what you're talking about.”
She charged after him. ”If you'd loved Lucy the way she deserved to be loved, you'd be doing everything in your power to find her and convince her to take you back. And I didn't have any hidden agenda. All I care about is Lucy's happiness.”
His steps slowed, and he turned. ”We both know that's not quite true.”
The way he studied her made her feel as though he understood something about her that she didn't. Her hands fisted at her sides. ”You think I was jealous? Is that what you're saying? That I set out to somehow sabotage her? I have a lot of faults, but I don't screw over my friends. Ever.”
”Then why did you screw over Lucy?”
His lethal, unfair attack sent an angry rush through her. ”Get out.”
He was already leaving, but not before he sent a final dart her way. ”Nice dragon.”
By the time her s.h.i.+ft was over, all the inn's rooms were occupied, making it impossible for her to sneak in a shower. Carlos had smuggled her a m.u.f.fin, her lone meal of the day. Besides Carlos, the only other person who didn't seem to hate her was Birdie Kittle's eighteen-year-old daughter, Haley, which was something of a surprise, since she identified herself as Ted's personal a.s.sistant. But Meg soon figured out that meant she merely ran occasional errands for him.
Haley had a summer job at the country club, so Meg didn't see her much, but she sometimes stopped in a room Meg was cleaning. ”I know Lucy's your friend,” she said one afternoon as she helped Meg tuck in a clean sheet. ”And she was super nice to everybody. But she didn't seem like she'd be happy in Wynette.”
Haley bore little resemblance to her mother. A few inches taller, with a long face and straight, light brown hair, she wore her clothes too small and applied more makeup than her delicate features warranted. Meg gathered from an exchange she'd overheard between Birdie and her daughter that the eighteen-year-old's entry into s.k.a.n.kdom was fairly recent.
”Lucy is pretty adaptable,” Meg said as she slipped on a fresh pillowcase.
”Still, she seemed more like a big-city person to me, and even though Ted travels all over when he does consulting, this is where he lives.”
Meg appreciated knowing someone else in this town had shared her doubts, but it didn't help shake off her growing despondence. When she left the inn that evening, she was dirty and hungry. She lived in a rusty Buick she parked each night in a deserted patch of scrub by the town gravel quarry where she prayed no one would discover her. Her body felt heavy despite her empty stomach, and as she approached the car that had become her home, her steps slowed. Something didn't seem right. She looked more closely.
The rear of the car on the driver's side sagged almost imperceptibly. She had a flat tire.
She stood there without moving, trying to absorb this latest disaster. Her car was all she had left. In the past when she'd had a flat, she'd simply called someone and paid to have it changed, but she had barely twenty dollars left. And even if she could figure out how to change it herself, she didn't know whether the spare had air. If there was a spare.
With a catch in her throat, she opened the trunk and pulled up the mangy carpet, filthy with oil, dirt, and who knew what else? She found the spare tire, but it was flat. She'd have to drive on the bad tire to the town's nearest service station and pray she didn't damage the rim on the way.
The owner knew who she was, just like everybody else in town. He delivered a cutting remark about this only being a hick small-town garage, then launched into a rambling story extolling the way saintly Ted Beaudine had single-handedly saved the county food pantry from closing. When he wound down, he demanded twenty dollars in advance to replace the original tire with the balding spare.
”I've got nineteen.”
”Hand it over.”
She emptied her wallet and stomped inside the service station while he changed the tire. The coins that had collected in the bottom of her purse were all she had left. As she stared at the snack dispensers filled with goodies she could no longer afford, Ted Beaudine's old powder blue Ford pickup pulled to a pump. She'd seen him drive the truck through town, and she remembered Lucy mentioning that he'd modified it with some of his inventions, but it still looked like an old beater to her.
A woman with long brunette hair sat in the pa.s.senger seat. As Ted got out, she lifted her arm and pushed her hair away from her face with a gesture as graceful as a ballerina's. Meg recalled seeing her at the rehearsal dinner, but there had been so many people, and they hadn't been introduced.
Ted slipped back inside the car as the tank filled. The woman curled her hand around his neck. He tilted his face toward her, and they kissed. Meg watched with disgust. So much for Lucy's guilt over breaking Ted's heart.
The truck didn't seem to take much gas-maybe the hydrogen fuel cell Lucy had mentioned. Ordinarily Meg would have been interested in something like that, but now all she cared about was counting the change in the bottom of her purse. One dollar and six cents.
As she drove away from the service station, she finally accepted the fact she least wanted to face. She'd hit bottom. She was famished, filthy, and the only home she had was nearly out of gas. Of all her friends, Georgie York Shepard was the softest touch. Indefatigable Georgie, who'd been supporting herself since she was a child.
Georgie, it's me. I'm aimless and undisciplined, and I need you to take care of me because I can't take care of myself.
An rv chugged past, heading into town. She couldn't face driving back to the gravel pit and spending another night trying to convince herself this was simply a new travel adventure. Sure, she'd slept in dark, scary places before, but only for a few days and always with a friendly guide nearby and a four-star hotel waiting at the end of the trip. This, on the other hand, was homelessness. One step away from pus.h.i.+ng a shopping cart down the street.
She wanted her father. She wanted him to hug her close and tell her everything would be all right. She wanted her mother to stroke her hair and promise that no monsters lurked in the closet. She wanted to curl up in her old bedroom in the house where she'd always felt so restless.
But as much as her parents loved her, they'd never respected her. Neither had Dylan, Clay, or her uncle Michel. And once she hit Georgie up for money, her friend would join the list.
She started to cry. Big, drippy tears of self-disgust for hungry, homeless Meg Koranda, who'd been born with every advantage and still couldn't make anything of herself. She pulled off the road onto the crumbling parking lot of a shuttered roadhouse. She needed to call Georgie now, before her father remembered he was still paying her phone bill and he cut that off, too.
She ran her thumb over the b.u.t.tons and tried to figure out how Lucy was managing. Lucy hadn't gone home, either. What was she doing to get by that Meg hadn't figured out how to do for herself?
A church bell tolled six o'clock, reminding her of the church Ted had given Lucy as a wedding present. A pickup rattled by with a dog in the back, and the phone slipped from Meg's fingers. Lucy's church! Lucy's church! Sitting empty. Sitting empty.