Laura Drake - Twice in a Blue Moon

Her client’s indignant yell didn’t douse the burn in her gut.

I can’t do this anymore.

Only a week into her old job and this was the third and scariest pass so far. She’d told herself that she’d been spoiled with the cushy life—but it was more than that. Before Harry, the upscale clientele of Las Brisas had at least shown respect for her skills and service. Now she was accosted on a daily basis. She snatched an Egyptian cotton towel from a stack, wiping her hands as she walked through the gym, hyperaware of the curious eyes that followed her.

This was not going to work. She needed a new plan.

As with everything he touched, Harry had changed her. She was no longer the free-spirited, starstruck newbie, grateful for a dream job teaching yoga to starlets and massaging famous muscle. But without Harry’s love and unswerving loyalty, who was she now? She didn’t know.

But she wasn’t this.

A crushing blanket of loss had descended the morning she woke to find the lifeless body of her mentor, her love, her best friend, cooling on the mattress beside her. After that Harry had belonged to everyone: the press, his fans, his daughter. In their hands, the funeral morphed from the quiet family ceremony Harry had wanted into a nightmare of Hollywood proportions complete with limos, television cameras and paparazzi.

Indigo pushed open the door to the women’s locker room, hollow to the marrow of her bones. She put her hands on her knees and leaned over, waiting for a wave of dizziness to pass. When had she last eaten?

But a decent meal wouldn’t touch this emptiness. The problem was much deeper.

The commune where she’d grown up had been a large sheltering womb that, after high school, had shrunk to the point of claustrophobia. She’d fought her way out, choosing to be born instead between the glamorous thighs of Hollywood.

It was only later she learned her surrogate mother was a narcissistic whore.

That was the last time she’d trusted her gut. Lost, and one bad choice from disaster, she’d met Harry.

“Indigo Blue. It sounds like a streetwalker’s name.” A chalkboard-squeal voice drifted from the first row of teak lockers.

“The only reason anyone invited her to parties at all was because she had Harry wrapped around her ring finger. How do you suppose she did that?”

“See? We’re back to the streetwalker thing.”

Blood pounded up Indigo’s neck, flooding her face with heat. She eyed the exit, but her car keys were in her locker. Tightening her stomach muscles, she walked on. Coming abreast of the lockers, she glanced to the two underwear-clad plastic surgery billboards. “Monica, you may want to stick with those voice lessons.” She covered the bitchy words in fake-sincerity syrup. “You’re still strident, dear.”

That shut them up. She grabbed her stuff and got the hell out.

* * *

TWODAYSLATER, her Louis Vuitton luggage open on the bed, Indigo stood before her walk-in closet, which was bigger than her childhood bedroom. She surveyed the yards of satin, spandex and sequins, seeing her Hollywood life recede like the view in the long end of a telescope.

That’s how it felt—as if, at twenty-seven, she’d already led three separate lifetimes: the tomboy who’d grown up wild on the Humboldt County commune, the star-struck yoga instructor and the celebrity wife of an aging Hollywood icon.

Thanks to her mom and Harry, two of those lives had turned out well. The one in between, the one she’d been in charge of? Epic fail. She turned away from the closet. Whatever lifetime came next, she sure wouldn’t need this wardrobe.

Mom wanted her to come home to People’s Farm, but her experience at the spa had taught her that going backward didn’t work. Thanks to the skills she’d learned there, she could put her portable massage table under her arm and start her next lifetime almost anywhere.

And in the ass-end hours of last night, she’d decided to begin that life at the winery—the one remnant of this life that was truly hers. Maybe she’d find Harry’s spirit where they’d been happiest.

Closing the luggage, she glanced around the bedroom, listening one last time for a whisper of Harry. All she heard was the whine of the pool pump through the open French doors. She now understood the phantom pain that amputees felt for a missing limb, because of the gaping hole in her that Harry had left. What would happen to her now, without his steady guiding hand on her shoulder?

Everyone believed she’d married Harry Stone for his money. Still, she’d thought she’d made a few friends in the four years they’d been married. But the past two months proved that all the naïveté hadn’t yet rubbed off of Indigo Blue. She shook her head, picked up what was left of this life and walked downstairs.

Claws on marble echoed in the two-story vestibule, getting closer. She dropped the load and knelt as Harry’s basset hound, Barnabas, careened around the corner, huge feet pistoning until he gained traction and barreled into her.

“Oof. Well, hello to you too, big guy.” Avoiding drool, she knelt to pet him from soft ears to whipping tail. “The Wicked Witch of the West will be here soon. Let’s spare ourselves that drama, eh?”

“Well, I may be a witch, but that’s not Toto.” Brenda Stone swept in on stilettos instead of a broom. “And you are no Dorothy.” She flipped her salon-perfect blond tresses over her shoulder and strutted over on shapely, tanning-bed-brown legs. “Give me your house key, and open the suitcases.”

Indigo stood, fists clenched at her sides. “You think I’d steal something?”

“Listen up, bitch.” The diva waved a carmine talon in front of Indigo’s nose. “Daddy’s gone. I don’t have to put up with your shit for one more second.” She planted a fist on her hip. “Now, are you going to open up? Or do I call the cops?”

They were once “friends.” That was before Indigo understood the Hollywood definition. She would have accepted Brenda’s aversion to having a stepmother her own age, but Brenda had made it clear that the competition wasn’t for Harry’s love—but for his money.

Indigo spread her arms. “If I’d wanted any of this, I wouldn’t have insisted on a prenup leaving all of it to you.” The only things she wanted from this house were Barney, her wedding rings and a few of Harry’s T-shirts to sleep in.

“Yeah, like anybody believed that story.” Brenda sniffed, her eyes crawling over the luggage. “Open them. Now.”

Indigo bent and popped the locks on the first suitcase, tasting bitterness in the back of her throat. Sure, Brenda was all about money. But Indigo knew that deeper in her hate-shriveled heart lived an insecure, jealous little girl, and that was Indigo’s unforgivable sin. Not that Brenda was that little girl—but that Indigo knew it.

A few minutes more, and you’re done with all this forever.

She flipped open the suitcase. Slapping the drama queen silly would sure feel good but would only supply more fodder for the gossip rags. Harry deserved better. Guts churning, she gritted her teeth and opened the next.

Ten minutes later the inspection was over, leaving Indigo feeling as violated as a cavity search.

“Just because I’m a nice person, and since you didn’t try to steal anything else, I’ll let you keep the Vuitton.” Brenda raked a proprietary gaze over the marbled entryway and the Tara-style staircase, then back. “You were less than nothing before you met my dad. You’re now free to go back to that.” She flicked a hand in Barney’s direction. “You’re taking that filthy animal, right?”

Indigo snapped the last lock shut and looked into Barney’s droopy eyes. “Are you ready?” Taking his tail wag as assent, she stood, grabbed the handles of the suitcases, and left this lifetime behind.