Молли Харпер - And One Last Thing...

“Well, I’m not really remorseful and I do feel justified in what I did,” I said.

“That’s fine; you just shouldn’t tell anybody that!” Samantha exclaimed. “Look, this could just die down. But considering that the newsletter is supposed to be ‘widely e-mailed’ I doubt it. In case it doesn’t, and by some horrible whim of fate you manage to get the attention of other media outlets, you don’t even speak to decline comment, you just walk away. In fact, you don’t talk to anyone you don’t know, got it?”

“Lacey!” Mama called. “I think you need to come see this.”

I carried the cordless phone into the living room, where Mama stood in the window, watching a news crew setting up on our front lawn.

“What?” Samantha asked.

“Umm, a camera crew from Channel Five.” I told her.

“And Channel Seven!” Mama called.

“And Channel Seven,” I told Samantha.

Samantha groaned as Mama snapped curtains closed. And if I wasn’t mistaken, I could hear her banging her head against her desk. “Do you have somewhere you could go lay low for a while?”

“I’m thinking maybe Timbuktu,” I muttered, padding back into the kitchen.

“Funny,” she snorted. “I want you to leave town for a while and I don’t want you to talk to anybody. Keep your cell phone on. Tell your parents if they get any media calls to refer all questions to me.”

After a few more curt instructions from my lawyer, I hung up and banged my own head against the kitchen counter.

“This is just not good,” I moaned. “I’m going to end up a punch line on Jay Leno, like that Runaway Bride girl with the crazy eyes.”

Mama sighed. “You should have thought of that before airing your laundry.” When I gave her a stern look, she shrank back a little. “Too soon?”

“Samantha says I need to find a place to lay low for a while.”

“Maybe you should head up to the cabin,” she said. “Hide out there for a while. Even if someone told the reporters where you were, I doubt they’d be able to find you.”

I lifted my head, taking a Post-it note with “milk, eggs, bread” written on it with me. I swatted it off of my forehead. Why hadn’t I thought of the cabin?

Mike and I hadn’t been to the cabin or Lake Lockwood in months. Gammy Muldoon left the cabin to me just before we got married, with the understanding that Emmett could use it whenever he wanted to. But Emmett was religious about protecting his skin from damaging UV rays, so he never wanted to use it. Mike and I went up for weekends sometimes, but we’d fallen out of the habit unless it was Memorial or Labor Day.

Despite the fact that his boat-in-progress was housed there, Mike didn’t particularly enjoy our time at the cabin. It wasn’t as nice as our friends’ places and he didn’t feel like we could entertain properly there. He hated the rattling old window-unit air conditioner, the shabby, splintering porch swing, and the sprung chintz couch in the living room. One of the biggest fights we’d ever had was over Mike’s listing the house with a Realtor to gauge the market viability of the property without telling me. He argued that we never used that “run-down old shack” and it would be much smarter to sell it and put the money toward a place in Lighthouse Cove. I called the Realtor, canceled the listing, and went out and bought new outdoor furniture, a hammock, a new couch, and a laundry list of other things to fix the house up. I maxed out my Visa for that month, but at least Mike couldn’t complain about the damn couch anymore.

The good news was that along with its lack of a prestigious address or central air, Mike deeply resented the tax liability the lake house represented. So, when we got married, it stayed in my name.

Mike’s being a tightwad had finally paid off.

The cabin was only about an hour from Singletree, but it might as well have been an ocean away. It wasn’t much to look at, one story of aging gray cedar set two miles back from the nearest access road. The water of Lake Lockwood was always freezing and smelled faintly of fish, but some of my best childhood memories were rooted in that cabin.

My maternal grandma, Gammy Muldoon, made no apologies for designating me her favorite grandchild. She wasn’t cruel or hurtful about it. She gave thoughtful Christmas and birthday presents to Emmett. She took him out for special outings and called him her “little monkey.” But I was Gammy’s special girl… because I stood still long enough to listen to her stories.

Gammy was a pistol. She cheated viciously at rummy and drank a steady stream of daiquiris after 4:00 p.m. Many people say she’s where I get my special unladylike mastery of “bluer” language, which my Grandma Vernon never managed to cure. Gammy and Grandpa built the family cabin almost fifty years earlier, back when even the richest of the rich didn’t have air-conditioning. Going to the lake was the only escape from the sticky, humid heat. The whole house was decorated in early American Coca-Cola. Old signs, posters, glasses, plaques, everywhere you looked there were rosy-cheeked young citizens trying to sell you the most delicious caffeinated beverage known to man. It was either kitschy or within kissing distance of serial killer territory.

The closest thing to a town near Lake Lockwood was Buford, a tiny tourist trap that depended on summer traffic to keep

stores open during the year. As I drove my mom’s car through town, I had to dodge RVs and boat trailers as tourists with very little experience driving either negotiated the streets. We had a local woman, Mrs. Witter, who kept the place up for us. She came in once a month to check for storm or pest damage, gave it a good annual spring cleaning, and closed the place for the winter. It was obvious she’d given the place a thorough once over after I’d called her that afternoon. The floor was freshly scrubbed and the living room still smelled like lemon Pledge and Windex. As usual, she’d left a plate of her famous snickerdoodles for me on the table.

I carried in my suitcase, my laptop and a couple of bags of on the lam” groceries. Dropping it all on the kitchen counter, I stared at my new home. I’d never realized how small the cabin was. Or that it had a weird old refrigerator sort of smell. Or that the floor slanted slightly when you walked back toward the bedroom.

“Stop it,” I told myself sternly. “Stop it, right now. Stop finding fault and freaking out. It’s going to be -… Oh, for crap’s sake, I’ve been living alone for five minutes and I’m already talking to myself.”

Right now the only thing the cabin had going for it was that the phone wasn’t ringing off the hook. The reporters that had been calling, visiting, and just plain camping outside my parents’ house had proved themselves to be resourceful little buggers. My first order of business was to unplug the phone. I did, however, leave the cord in the outlet because I was going to need it for slower–than-Christmas dial-up internet access.

For an hour or so I managed to occupy myself with mundane little moving-in tasks, but you can only rearrange your toiletries so many times. I tucked my suitcase under the bed, threw the boxes in the burn barrel, and fixed a turkey sandwich, which I couldn’t eat. I just stared at the plate until the edges of the meat got sort of dry and crusty. I threw it out, dropped onto the couch, and rubbed at my chest, where my stomach acid rose with threatening velocity.

I had no idea what to do. Even when I “stayed at home” before, I had a daily to-do list. I had lists of lists. Grocery shopping. Committee meetings. Hair appointments. Yoga classes. Picking up dry cleaning. Planning dinners for friends. Waiting at home for the carpet shampooers, the exterminator. Writing endless thank-you notes to people I barely knew, waxing poetic about their participation in the Junior League Fall Festival or their donation to the Ladies Auxiliary Golf Tournament. My hand could practically write, “Thank you so much for your generous contribution” on autopilot.