A Teeny Bit of Trouble (5 page)

“Hush, you’re interfering with my creative energy,” she said. She opened her diary and began to write. Finally, she lowered her pencil and read out loud.

“Tonight Coop scraped mud off my shoes. He dropped to his knees in a worshipful position and cradled my foot in his hand. It was so rad, the bestest feeling in the whole world. Like I was the queen of a majorly cute country. I looked down on him and spit right in his hair. He didn’t notice because he was overcome with love. I was overcome with an urge to whack him in the head with my other shoe and I would have shuddered when his skull cracked open like a dropped watermelon. I am not a violent girl. Plus, all that blood would have been grody and I would have barfed if it had gotten on me. But I wanted to hurt him. He’s so boring. Such a goody two-shoes. Josh and Teeny were watching, so I pulled the fury back inside me and spared Coop’s life.”

“What kind of writing is that?” I cried. It sounded like the run-together thoughts of a budding serial killer.

“It’s fiction,” she said, looking offended. “I employ the stream of conscious style. But you make Cs and Ds in English, so you can’t possibly understand literary techniques.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” I jammed a pillow over my head.

She yanked it away. “Why did Josh run off tonight? What happened?”

“I kicked him.”

“Why?”

“Because he got fresh. You told him I’d put out.”

“You’re a liar. And you’re insane. Guess you can’t help it. All the Templetons are short, fat lunatics. If you ever get married and have a child, you’ll run off and leave it. Just like your mother left you.”

“You’re nothing but a writing fool,” I said. I grabbed a pillow and blanket, then I marched out of her room. If it hadn’t been so late, I would have called Aunt Bluette and made her pick me up. I made a pallet on the front porch, but I couldn’t sleep, so I made up recipes.

The next morning, Coop stopped by the Browning. Before I had time to move, he tripped over my legs and fell on top of me. I lay beneath him, trying to memorize the scratchy-softness of his white shirt and the mossy tang of his English Leather cologne. That’s what he wore back then. I liked how it smelled. I liked how his chest pressed against mine. I counted each thump of his heart.

The front door creaked open, and I turned my head. Barb’s face contorted. “Teeny Templeton, quit seducing my boyfriend!”

Coop raised up. “Teeny didn’t do anything. I tripped.”

Barb started crying. Five minutes later, her mama drove me back to the farm, blaming her daughter’s behavior on hormones. “It’s that time of the month,” Mrs. Browning said. “She can’t control her mood swings. But what woman can?”

If you asked me, Barb was a spoiled rotten, homicidal puzzle stealer who could eat cookies any time she wanted and never gain a pound. But I just smiled at Mrs. Browning.

*   *   *

That Monday, I went to school early to work on my Home Ec project. Barb was already there, putting the finishing touches on her snickerdoodle cheesecake. “If you try to steal Coop from me, I’ll beat you in the head with my shoe,” she said. Then she smiled sweetly.

Later that morning, when the teacher handed out the grades, I got an F because worms had mysteriously ended up in my Lady Baltimore cake. The next day, someone wired a dead crab to my truck’s carburetor. The day after that, someone wrote graffiti in the Waffle House rest room. After all these years, I could still see those words so clearly:
TEENY TEMPLETON GOES DOWN ON A FIRST DATE
was scratched into the paint right next to
TEENY TEMPLETON HAD SEX IN THIS STALL.

Needless to say, Barb and I stopped being friends.

A whole year went by. She and Coop were voted Bonaventure High’s “Cutest Couple.” I assumed they’d get married after graduation, but they broke up. Not too long afterward, he asked me on a date. We went to a First Baptist cookout at the lake. The next night we went to the movie theater, and the night after that we went fishing. All my life I’d loved him from afar, but he’d always treated me like a sister. Now, he looked at me in a new way, one that made prurient thoughts fill my head.

The first time he kissed me, an unbearable pleasure took control of my brain. My limbs relaxed, and my insides filled with damp heat. Our tongues met and danced away. I didn’t know kisses could make me woozy-crazy. Like a fool, I kept his hands in the Baptist zone.

The summer whirled by. I baked him peach pies. He took me to a Bon Jovi concert and to a pool party at his parents’ house. In August he stopped calling. At first, I didn’t worry. He was about to leave for college, and he’d shown me his mile-long to-do list. I baked a cake for his birthday and left a message with his mother, but he never called back.

One blazing hot afternoon, he showed up at the farm and said he and Barb had gotten back together. I started wheezing.
Please God
,
not an asthma attack
.
Not in front of Coop
. Aunt Bluette rushed me to the hospital. Coop’s dad was my doctor, and he put me in an oxygen tent. My lungs recovered, but my heart had shriveled to the size of a peach pit.

“Don’t be sad, Teeny,” Aunt Bluette said, tucking a blanket around my chin. “When a door closes, a window opens.”

My psychic cousin, Tallulah, drove down from Tennessee. She was on her way to Chamor Island to visit Aunt Bunny, but she spent a few nights with us. Tallulah listened to my sad story, then she squeezed my hand. “You’ll find love again. And when you do, the guy will have an O, A, and E in his name.”

Coop O’Malley’s name had those letters. But so did a dozen other guys.

After Tallulah left, I moped around the farm until late August. Then I started my senior year. Coop went to a college in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, but he came home every weekend. It hurt my heart to see him and Barb at football games, even though I was dating Aaron Fisher, the most popular jock in high school. He had the right moves, and his name had the right letters.
He’s the one
, I kept telling myself.

But Aaron had another destiny. He won a football scholarship to Clemson, and during his freshman year he drank too much alcohol at a fraternity party and died. I was ready to give up on love. Then, a year later, I met an older guy. Son Finnegan was in medical school, and just when I started to fall for him, Aunt Bluette chased him off.

All I had left was the memory of romance. It reminded me of the perfect peach pie, where your fork breaks through the flaky, top crust into the sweet, amber-colored filling and the flavors of summer melt on your tongue. But I’d forgotten to write down the recipe and I could never make that exact pie again. My life had become a Jimmy Webb song, “MacArthur Park.”

The years ran by, a whole decade of loveless years. Sure, I dated. Once, I’d gotten engaged. Then, a few months ago, on a balmy June night, I walked into a Charleston pub and ordered a peach martini. I remember that evening so clearly. An Elvis song played on the juke box. And a guy with gray-blue eyes sat beside me. Coop O’Malley, a guy with an O, A, and an E in his name. Later, he told me that he’d felt an unstoppable urge for Guinness and he’d driven from Isle of Palms to downtown Charleston.

“I’m a logic-driven man,” he’d said. “But I’ve got just enough Irish blood to believe in fate. I’ve known you since we were children, but when I saw you that night, I fell smack in love. I knew that I’d come to that pub for a reason.”

Maybe it was fate. Or maybe it was thirst. It didn’t matter. Coop and I had found each other again; but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to go terribly wrong. I could almost hear Aunt Bluette’s doors and windows. They weren’t slamming, they were being nailed shut.

four

The next morning, a pinprick drizzle fell over Charleston, glazing the sidewalks and trees. I put on a rainbow-striped skirt, a dazzle of cherry-lilac-daffodil-blueberry-and-lime, something I’d scored at a vintage shop. If anyone carbon dated the fabric, it would probably be identified as Joseph’s coat of many colors. Also, I wore a lightweight red cotton jacket, a pink blouse, and high-top turquoise sneakers. It was the kind of outfit that could cause instant blindness, but I was a foodie, not a fashionista.

I grabbed an umbrella and walked Sir to the Battery. My missing cell phone was still on my mind. What if the masked man had found it? Would he turn it over to the police or run up a bill? In the distance, church bells clanged, calling Charlestonians to Sunday school.

My pulse slowed as I walked back to East Bay Street. Then it sped up again when I saw a strange yellow van in front of my house. Through the rain-speckled windshield, I glimpsed the driver’s chin-length brassy hair. His broad nose lay across his face like a catfish fillet.

Red Butler Hill. Coop’s private detective.

In addition to doing surveillance, Red had just started moonlighting for a repo company, and he drove a new van every week. Emerson Philpot sat in the passenger seat looking pissed off. Why were they here? And where was O’Malley?

My heart sped up a little more when the van’s side door rumbled open and Coop climbed out of the rear compartment. His dark hair curled at the ends. The holes in his Levis showed flashes of tanned skin. He hadn’t shaved, and dark stubble ran under his jaw. His shirt was so damp, I could see matted chest hairs beneath the wet cotton.

“I’m sorry to show up unannounced,” he said. “I tried to call. But you didn’t answer. So I came over.”

His husky drawl made me tremble. He looked pretty shaky himself, and I repressed the urge to pull him into the house, wrap him in a wool blanket, and feed him warm apple turnovers. I don’t know what it is about me, but I have this need to take care of people.

“I unplugged the phone,” I said, then my throat went dry.

He cast an appreciative glance at my figure, but didn’t comment about my eye-popping outfit. Sir’s stubby tail wagged. He lunged over to Coop, and the leash flew out of my hand.

“Hey, little buddy.” Coop’s bangs flopped in his eyes as he bent down to scratch the dog’s head. An unstoppable love welled up inside me as I remembered another wet morning when Sir had raced into the traffic on East Bay Street. I’d stood on the sidewalk, begging him to come back. Without hesitation, Coop had charged into the road. He’d almost gotten hit by a car, but he’d saved my dog.

The van’s horn tooted, and I turned. Emerson flattened her nose against the side window. Behind her, Red gave me a thumb’s down sign.

Something is going on. Something bad.
I glanced at Coop. “Why is Red here? Did you find Barb?”

Coop shook his head. “Not yet. Red and I went back to her house. Her car and suitcase really are missing. I looked for your phone. Didn’t find it, sorry.”

“Thanks for trying.” My gaze wandered back to Emerson. She licked the window.

Coop raised up. “I got a hold of Barb’s husband.”

My mind latched on to the phrase
got a hold of.
When Coop is upset, his Georgia accent breaks through the polish that he’d acquired in England.
Got a hold of
wasn’t something you did to a snapping turtle. My throat clenched. Now I knew why he’d come over. He was taking Emerson to Bonaventure. And he’d come to say good-bye.

My hand shook as I unlocked my iron privacy gate and stepped into the brick corridor. I leaned against the wall, just beneath the flickering gaslights. Coop and Sir were right behind me.

“Lester wants me to bring Emerson to his drugstore.”

It took me a second to digest that sentence. Lester Philpot was Barb’s pharmacist-husband. But why did he want the child brought to his store?

Today was Sunday, and Philpot’s Pharmacy was closed.

I spread my hands along the brick wall. “Did you tell Lester what I saw?”

“No.”

“Why not? Because it’s hearsay?” Me, I was right fond of hearsay. I made illegal U-turns and drove through yellow lights. I lived in the gray zone. Even my front door was gray, and every time Coop passed through it, he seemed to loosen up.

“I told Lester what Barb told me,” he said. “That she’d threatened to run away and leave the child. He wasn’t surprised.”

“But he only knows half of the story,” I said. “Your half.”

The firm line in Coop’s jaw told me that he was doing the best he could. “Lester is arranging a paternity test, so I’ll be in Bonaventure for a few days.” He touched my arm. “Will you come with me?”

I shook my head. But the warm pressure of his fingers sent a moist flush through my whole body. He must have seen something in my eyes, because his jaw softened. He took my face in his hands.

“Please give me another chance, Teeny. I’ll never hurt you again.”

Aunt Bluette used to say that picking a man was like selecting a peach, a conscious act, but she was wrong. I couldn’t choose who I loved, but I could decide how I wanted to be treated.

“I thought we could stay at your farm and eat peaches,” he said.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, but I did too want to go. I raised my lie tally to twenty-three. Then I felt so ashamed. This wasn’t about me, it was about Emerson. I stole a glance in her direction. She drew an angry-smiley face on her window.

Coop’s hands fell to his sides. He looked away, but not before I saw tears beaded on his lashes. I had never seen him cry, even when he was six years old and he’d cut his chin on the merry-go-round. I’d held my gloved hand to the wound. He’d been such a tough little guy, but I’d felt his pain as my own and I’d bawled my eyes out. The memory of that day pressed in around me, and I could hardly breathe.

“You had me at peaches,” I whispered. This was a Jerry Maguire moment. Lies or no lies, kid or no kid, I was going with him to Georgia.

*   *   *

During the three-hour drive to Bonaventure, Red draped one hand over the steering wheel, his diamond cluster ring catching the morning light. Before he’d become a private investigator, he’d worked cold homicide cases, but the job had given him sleepless nights and high blood pressure.

Coop and I sat in the backseat. Behind us, in the rear of the van, Sir and T-Bone stretched out. Emerson rode shotgun and lectured us about the mating habits of hammerhead sharks. “I saw a real hammerhead at the aquarium,” she said. “Its name was Bruce.”