Picking Up the Pieces: Rose Gardner Novella 5.5 (Volume 2) Read online

  “So the business is safe?” she asked.

  “And then some. Joe not only paid what we owed, but also the balance of the loan.”

  “Wow. What’d you say when you found out?”

  “I told them both I quit.”

  She gave her head a shake. “How’s that gonna work since you own at least seventy percent?”

  “I don’t know. We never had a chance to sort it out. Hilary showed up and dropped a bombshell.”

  Her eyebrows rose at the mention of Hilary’s name. “I’m scared to ask what that might be,” she said after a moment.

  I folded my hands together on the table. “She’s pregnant.”

  Her mouth formed an O. “Poor Joe.”

  “I know. He was devastated. She wants to get married in a few weeks on their original wedding date. She said her mother never cancelled any of the plans.”

  She puckered her mouth. “Well, that’s enlightening. He broke up with her, yet she didn’t cancel the fake wedding. Then she turns up when it’s only a few weeks away and claims she’s pregnant. How convenient.” She drew out the last word as thick as molasses in January.

  “I think she really might be pregnant, Neely Kate. She showed Joe a paper with the lab results.”

  Neely Kate didn’t look impressed. “Anyone with a computer can fake that.”

  “That’s what Joe insinuated. But then she told him she made an appointment at the doctor’s office this afternoon. She’s scheduled an ultrasound so Joe can see the baby’s heartbeat.”

  “Oh, dear. She can’t fake that.” She put her hand over mine. “How are you handling all of this?”

  Her question caught me off guard. “Better and worse than I expected.”

  She shook her head. “That makes no sense.”

  “I know.” I tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear and leaned closer, lowering my voice. “I’m upset, but it’s not because I’m jealous, although I do feel weird when I think about it. But I’m mostly upset for Joe. I just feel incredibly sad to see him linked to her in such a permanent way. I know he got himself into this situation, but I don’t want him to pay for it when the price is so high.”

  “Why shouldn’t he pay for his mistake?” my friend asked, taking a sip of her water. “When has Joe Simmons ever paid for any of his mistakes or learned from them?”

  “He paid for many mistakes when he lost me,” I whispered. “No matter what you think, I know for a fact it broke Joe’s heart to leave me.” I cleared my throat. “But you’re right, he still hasn’t learned. After he came back to town, he tried to get me back even though his daddy still has all his incriminating evidence on us. And as far as I could tell, he had no plans to rectify the situation. Still”—I looked up into Neely Kate’s eyes, pleading with her to understand—“I would never wish this situation on him, and most certainly not on a tiny baby.”

  “You’re right. No one—especially a baby—deserves to live with that witch.”

  “I asked Jonah to talk to Joe.”

  “You did what? Joe can’t stand him.”

  “Well, Jonah’s gonna try anyway. He’s all alone, Neely Kate. He needs a friend.”

  “You are not responsible for Joe’s misery. I know you feel bad for him, but he needs to sort this out on his own. He’s your ex-boyfriend, Rose. Let it go.”

  “I still care about him, Neely Kate. You know he’d be there to help me in a heartbeat. He’s already proven that with Daniel Crocker. Several times.”

  “He did that to win you back.”

  I shook my head. “Yes, but he would have helped me anyway.”

  “You need to leave this alone, Rose,” Neely Kate hissed. “What’s Mason gonna say if he finds out you’re giving comfort to Joe Simmons? Especially after he kissed you? And not to mention you need to worry about Mason finding out about…other things.”

  I took a deep breath, leaning close and whispering so no one else could hear. “He’s in his office right now with the DA, the sheriff, and somebody else. They’re trying to figure out the identity of the woman who was at the auction with Skeeter Malcolm.”

  “Oh, crap,” Neely Kate said louder than I liked.

  “Shh!” I looked around to see if anyone was paying attention to us, but thankfully most of the patrons today were holiday shoppers and not courthouse employees. “No kidding.”

  “What are you going to do?” she whispered.

  I grimaced with a half shrug. “Hope it all goes away…?”

  Her eyes narrowed with irritation. “You need to tell Mason you were there.”

  “And what’s he gonna say to that, Neely Kate? He would be furious.”

  She leaned her forearms on the table, her face a foot from mine as she whispered, “You should have thought about that before you went to Skeeter in the first place.”

  “I never expected any of this to happen!” I still kept my voice low. “Besides, if I were to tell Mason about my association with…Skeeter, I’d incriminate him, and I can’t do that.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “Because he helped me, Neely Kate. I went to him in good faith and I can’t betray him now.”

  “Then you’re good and stuck, aren’t you?”

  I put my elbow on the table, resting my chin on my hand and grumbled, “So what else is new?”

  After lunch, I needed to call Bruce Wayne, but there was someone I had to talk to first. Violet.

  Chapter Four

  Violet

  I hated the house I’d grown up in. The day I left to marry Mike a few months after high school graduation was the happiest day of my life. Or so I thought at the time.

  Only I’d gone from one form of oppression to another.

  Since moving back in several weeks ago, I had spent nearly every minute cleaning the tiny nine-hundred square foot home, trying to scrub away the bad memories to no avail. Rose had redecorated most of the surfaces after Momma died, putting up fresh paint and airy curtains, but it was like slapping a designer dress on a two-bit hooker. The surface might look pretty, but the character underneath was still seedy and coarse.

  God, I hated this house.

  Ashley hadn’t taken my separation from Mike well, and she often woke up in the middle of the night in tears. But my daughter’s nightmares had increased since moving out of the only home she’d ever known…and so had my anxiety. I’d sit up in bed in a cold sweat, roused by her screams, reliving the ugly hateful past, Rose’s cries mingling with Ashley’s in my head.

  “Violet! Help me!”

  Holding my little girl in the darkness reminded me of holding another little girl, smoothing her hair and telling her it was okay.

  “Don’t leave me, Violet,” she’d plead through her tears.

  I promised that I never would. Ever.

  And I hadn’t.

  I’d always stayed close to protect her from the woman who had called herself our mother. Three years after our wedding, Mike was offered a job in Little Rock. His father’s construction business was struggling at the time, so he’d begged me to move. I refused. Daddy had died only months before and Momma had insisted Rose come home from college, leaving in the middle of the second semester of her first year. I’d tried to talk Rose out of coming home to Henryetta, but Momma had my baby sister wrapped good and tight in her cycle of abuse, and Rose came running back desperate for Momma’s love and approval, despite the fact I’d spent the majority of my life trying to give her the love our mother refused her.

  I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t protected her. One of my earliest memories was of four-year-old Rose standing in the living room crying while Momma leaned over her, shouting, “You’re an evil child! I’ll beat that demon right out of ya!” But instead of beating her, Momma stuffed her in the hall closet and shut the door. That punishment was far more effective than any beating ever could be.

  Rose was terrified of being trapped in enclosed spaces.

  My little sister screamed and cried in terror while I pleaded
with Momma to let her out. Instead, Momma sent me to my room and told me to stay out of it. I sat on the floor of the stuffy bedroom Rose and I shared, staring at the closet door across the hall. My own tears slid down my face as I listened to my little sister cry. I had learned that any attempts to help her would only make her punishment worse, so I just sat there in our stuffy room, sweat dripping down my back, making my cotton shirt stick to my skin. Within fifteen minutes, Rose’s cries turned to soft whimpers and I heard a knock at the front door.

  “What’s all the ruckus, Agnes?” Miss Mildred asked through the screen door.

  “Rose,” was all Momma said, but the “hmm” Miss Mildred released said she knew all about my little sister and her devious behavior.

  The screen door banged open then shut, and I could hear their muffled voices as they gossiped about Miss Opal, who lived across the street. Poking my head out of the bedroom door, I realized they were on the front porch, sitting in Momma’s wicker chairs.

  My stomach knotted into a tight ball as I ran across the hall into the bathroom and filled a small cup with water. Making sure Momma was still outside, I opened the closet door and found Rose on the floor, huddled against the wall. Strands of her dark brown hair were plastered to her damp, reddened cheeks and her eyes blinked at the sunlight.

  “Violet?” she whimpered.

  I turned to look toward the front door, panicked that Momma would discover what I was doing and hurt us even worse. “Here.” I thrust the cup at her and she grabbed it, gulping the water in a matter of seconds.

  “Come back later,” Momma said, still outside. “I’ve got a pot of beans goin’.”

  My heart began to race. “Stop cryin’, Rose, and Momma will let you out.”

  “I’m scared, Vi.” Her voice broke and fresh tears filled her eyes.

  “I know.” I swallowed down my fear and took the cup from her. “Pretend I’m holdin’ your hand. Okay?” I grabbed her hand and gave it a quick squeeze before shutting the door and scurrying to my room and landing on my bed. I heard the door bang against the frame and the floorboards creak as Momma walked to the closet door. I stuffed the cup under my pillow.

  Momma asked, “Have you learned your lesson, girl?”

  I held my breath when I didn’t hear anything, then Momma’s voice rose, “Speak up, you evil child. Have you learned your lesson?”

  “Yes, Momma.” I could barely hear her answer.

  “Get in yer room and stay there until your father comes home,” Momma barked.

  Seconds later, Rose stood in the doorway, her cotton dress soaked with sweat. I jumped off the bed we shared and grabbed her hand, leading her to the part of the mattress that was in front of the open window. A soft breeze blew the curtains, but I could hardly feel it, so I lifted Rose’s hair off her neck and blew on her to help cool her off. She began to cry again, silent tears falling down her face, and my heart ached in sympathy.

  I hadn’t saved her from our mother’s wrath. The only thing I could do now was comfort her.

  “What did you see this time?” I whispered. It was always the things Rose saw in her head that got her into trouble.

  “Momma dropped a hamburger on the floor and then gave it to Daddy.”

  “Oh, no.” Of course, it wasn’t the seeing that was the problem. It was the fact that she always recounted what it was she’d seen. She’d told Momma about that burger falling. “You have to make it stop, Rose.”

  “I don’t know how.” Her voice quivered with her tears.

  I hated our mother and I hated Daddy for letting Momma treat Rose that way. But sometimes—usually when Momma was in a hate-filled rage—I hated Rose too, for her stupid visions that made our lives hell, even though I knew she couldn’t stop them.

  When Rose started school, it wasn’t long before the other kids figured out she was different. But Henryetta’s elementary school was small enough that I could track down each and every kindergartner who dared to be mean to my sister. Maybe I couldn’t do a thing to stop Momma, but I did my darnedest to keep anyone else from hurting her.

  “You can’t tell anyone about your visions, Rose,” I coached her one day after school, bandaging her knee in our tiny bathroom. A boy in her class had pushed her down at recess. “People will think you’re different.”

  She looked up at me with wide, innocent eyes. “But they already think I’m different, Violet.”

  I shook my head, dabbing the scrape with a washrag. “Maybe so, but don’t give ’em any more ammunition to use against you.”

  She flinched in pain, then her little nose scrunched with confusion. “What does that mean?”

  “It means keep to yourself and don’t let anyone hurt you.”

  I took my own advice and wore it like a shield over my heart. I was the good Gardner sister. The pretty blond-haired, blue-eyed girl who was sweet to everyone. She did her homework, helped her neighbors, and most of all, she obeyed. She was the girl who everyone loved, the one who made up for the disappointment of her younger sister. But I didn’t let anyone get close. Through Rose, I learned that people weren’t to be trusted. They hurt you and used you and the best way to get through life was to fit in as best as you possibly could.

  But even though she had every reason to do otherwise, Rose trusted and saw the good in everyone. One afternoon when I was in sixth grade and she was in fourth, she was crying on the bus when I boarded it.

  I slid in next to her, anger burning in my chest. “What happened now?”

  Her sad hazel eyes looked up at me. “Nothing.”

  “Then why are you crying?” I reached for her face, wiping the tears off her cheeks.

  Her mouth twisted to the side as she looked down at her lap. “Jenny Blakely tricked me.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She asked me if I wanted to sit with her at lunch, so I did. She wanted my cookie, so I gave it to her after she told me she wanted me to be her new best friend. But at recess she said I was stupid if I believed she could be friends with a freak.”

  I knew that Jenny was one of the popular girls in the fourth grade and I also knew she had a mean streak. It must have been hereditary because her older sister Maggie—who happened to be in my class—had one too. But while I knew how to handle mean girls, gullible Rose didn’t have a clue. “Rose, why did you believe her?”

  She looked up at me with her trusting eyes. “Why wouldn’t she want to be my friend?”

  I talked Momma into letting me make cookies that night so long as I cleaned up my mess and the rest of the kitchen while I was at it. When she wasn’t looking, I put laxatives in a small batch of the dough, keeping it separate from the rest. I packaged the special cookies up in individual sandwich bags, using a marker on the plastic to address them to Jenny and a handful of other kids who had been mean to Rose. Then, to make sure their troubles wouldn’t be tied back to my sister, I packaged undoctored cookies for the other fifteen students in her class. I put them all into a small brown bag decorated with ribbons and gave them to Rose. “Hand these out to everyone in your class, but be sure to give them to the right people.”

  “Thank you, Vi.” She threw her arms around my neck, squeezing tight. “Everyone’s really gonna like me after this.”

  Poor Rose. She was so sweet and kind, it never occurred to her that other people might not be. Especially her own sister.

  That was the irony of it all. Rose was the good one, and I was the wicked one. Seeking revenge and retaliation all while I had the sweetest of smiles on my face. No one ever suspected a thing, least of all Rose.

  By the time I was in high school, I’d mastered the art of manipulation. But by then my use of it had expanded beyond defending my sister. It also came in handy for my own personal gain. Mike Beauregard was one year ahead of me, but I decided he was my ticket out of my personal hell called home. He was everything I hoped to have and more. He was the quarterback on the football team. He was smart and popular. His dad owned a business in town and he planned to
join it, which meant he’d stick around, allowing me to stay close to Rose. He was dating Stephanie Miller when I decided he would be mine, but it wasn’t hard to make him think she was cheating on him. A small part of me felt guilty for that, but that guilt quickly faded when Stephanie found a new boyfriend within a couple of weeks.

  I was already popular, but dating Mike raised me to a higher status. I was Homecoming Queen my senior year and I was happy, or as happy as I was capable of being with my stone cold heart.

  After I graduated, I got a job with an insurance agent while Mike had been working for his dad the past year. Mike didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get married—even though we’d discussed it—so I accidentally got pregnant to speed things along. Rose was in high school and Momma had gotten even meaner. I reasoned if I married Mike and moved out, I could bring Rose with me and ultimately save her from the witch.

  Imagine my surprise when Rose refused to go along with my plan. Mike and I had had a hell of a knock-down, drag-out fight over it after our wedding. All for nothing.

  “Momma needs me, Violet,” she insisted.

  “Momma needs a punching bag and that’s you, Rose.” I cupped her cheek. “Please. I worry about you now that I’m not there to protect you.”

  She slowly shook her head, her scraggly hair shaking with it. “I can’t leave her.” I saw the longing in her eyes. She wanted our mother to love her, but it was never gonna happen. No matter how hard she tried.

  “You can. And you must. Please, Rose. You’ll have your own room and everything.”

  I could see the conflict waging in her pretty hazel eyes. “I have my own room anyway ever since you left.” She gave me a tiny smile, trying to make me feel better.

  I wanted to grab her and shake her. I was the worldly one. I was the one who knew how to protect her. And she always listened to my advice…except when it came to our mother. “Then at least let me take you shopping this Saturday. I’m gonna need some maternity clothes before you know it.” I tugged on the sleeve of her oversized shirt. “I got a bonus at work and we can make a day of it. Maybe go to Little Rock? You’ve never been. It’ll be fun.”