Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
I blinked at her. Courtney was the wilder one of the two of us, but she was also the voice of reason. If anyone was going to give me the push to stop the lies, I thought it would be her. “But, how can you be sure telling the truth will blow up in my face?”
“Because you just told me that Sue’s husbands hate her,” she dropped. “They hate her for being the lying, scheming, manipulative bitch that we know she’s been for the last ten years. So what happens when the sister that Sue and Omma hid pulls a surprise, sucker! on them?
“They’re not going to give you the benefit of the doubt. They’re just going to think Omma gave birth to two lying, scheming bitches, and how will you convince them they’re wrong?” She gave me a wry look. “Upon meeting them again for the second time in ten years, the first thing you did... was lie. Not a ringing endorsement of your character.”
“But I had to!” I threw out my hands. “I didn’t want to lie to them, but Davis was standing right there. The fucker just wouldn’t leave! How could I tell them the truth in front of a cop?”
“Sarah, I know that,” she soothed. “I know you had good reason to lie, and I know that you’re the best person ever, but they don’t. You’re nothing but a stranger to them. A stranger who threw their dead wife off a cliff, then moved into her bedroom.”
I winced.
“How would you react if you were them?”
The words were pulled out of me. “I’d chase me out of town.”
She dipped her head, nodding to the right answer. “And you know I’d want to move you in with me if they did, but your girl lives in a little shoebox apartment above this café with her kid, so there’s no room.”
I gasped, jumping up. “Kid?! Courtney Rose Thorne, have you been out here having babies that I don’t know about?”
She grinned from ear to ear. “Yes, ma’am, I have, and that’s because I was having all kinds of unprotected sex you didn’t know about.” She fished her phone out of her apron, and showed me the sweet, smiling kid waving on her home screen. “I caught this little munchkin from a one-night stand who blew through town one weekend and never came back.
“That’s why I named her Chlamydia.”
“What!”
She burst out laughing, falling off her chair. “I’m kidding,” she shrieked. “Her name is Taylor, you freak.”
I busted up so hard, I cried. Gods, did I need this. I couldn’t remember the last time I full-blown belly-laughed. But Courtney was always the best person for that. Her wicked sense of humor would have me struggling to breathe in the back of class while the teacher shouted at us to be quiet or get out.
“Tell me everything about her.”
Courtney beamed like the proud mama she was. “My Tay-Tay is five. She loves puppies, horses, and her kindergarten teacher. Loves him so much in fact, she’s ordered me to marry him.”
Courtney rolled her eyes, but I knew her too well too.
“And you want to,” I said, blunt as a truck.
Her blush came on hot and fast. “I didn’t say that. I mean, sure, Mr. Stevens is sweet, and kind, and amazing with children—especially Taylor—but I’m just starting to get back on my feet. The last thing I need right now is a messy relationship with my daughter’s teacher.”
I waited her out. “Tell me.”
A hefty, whoosh-expelled breath tickled my hair. “Fine. You want the play-by-play? Here it is: After losing my best friend, I was forced to take off for Princeton without her right next door like we always planned.
“I want to say I still pulled it off without her, but not even close.” Courtney scrubbed her face, suddenly looking ten years older. “Everything imploded during sophomore year. My parents were going through a messy divorce, and for some reason, the only person they could talk about it with was me.
“Do you have any idea what it was like being forced to listen to my mother ranting about my father losing interest in her sexually, and that every orgasm she had in the last ten years of their marriage was from a vibrator?”
“Urgh,” I cried.
“That’s right! Urgh!” she burst out. “It was so fucking gross and inappropriate, but when I told her that, she blew up on me and told me I needed to stop being so childish. That’s how it was with the both of them. They wouldn’t stop calling me up and pouring all this horrible and private stuff about their relationship in my ear—including that Mom cheated on Dad when I was three, had a baby, then they both secretly had him adopted—knowing that I’d never remember she was pregnant.” She scoffed. “That is until Dad screamed the truth while in the middle of ranting that, of course, he lost interest in touching her. He never saw the ‘cheating bitch’ the same way after watching her give birth to another man’s child.”