Cheri on Top (7 page)

Chapter 8

“Oh,
hell
no.”

Cherise stumbled out of the car and stood in the gravel lane, her whisper escaping just before her mouth unhinged in shock. She was supposed to
live
here? The place was a complete
catastrophe
! Thistles up to her ass. A thick carpet of decayed leaves squishing under her feet. Hanging gutters. Missing shingles. Cracked windows. Thick kudzu growing unchecked up the bungalow’s stone walls. A crumbling porch. A dilapidated dock.

A squirrel on her foot.

Her shriek sent the birds scattering. The scream echoed across the lake, cut through the woods, and easily carried all the way over the Tennessee border.

She snatched her boot away from the filthy, destructive creature and jumped back, smacking up against the side of the DeVille. The nasty thing just sat there on its hind legs like a rat-sized circus poodle, its little jaw going a mile a minute.

Cherise stomped her boots in the gravel. The creature still didn’t move. “No! Git! Go away!”

The rodent cocked its head and stared at her with curious little brown marble eyes before it finally swished its tail and scurried off.

“Ain’t that bad.” Tater Wayne stood in the front door of the lake house, yet another bouquet of flowers dangling from his grip, his limp blond hair falling into his eyes. “Looks worse than it is, Cheri. Ain’t gonna fall on ya er nothin’.”

She willed her pulse to return to normal.

“Now, the outside is the main problem, but I’d hire a cleaning crew for the inside if I were you. It’s plenty bad, too.”

Cherise shuddered, trying to shake off the image of how the vermin had actually touched her boot. She hated squirrels. She almost lost everything on her very first residential flip when squirrels chewed through brand-new electrical wiring and started an attic fire.

Besides, they carried rabies. Ticks. Fleas. And God knew what else.

Gathering her courage, she walked gingerly toward the rotting porch steps, keeping an eye on whatever else might be lurking in the overgrown mess.

“Don’t be such a city girl,” Tater Wayne said, chuckling. “There’s always been critters and weeds and dirt out here. You just done forgot.” He smiled broadly at her, which caused his eyeball to go off on its pinball journey.

Cherise carefully made her way up the stairs and onto the porch.

“Here,” he said, shoving the flowers toward her.

She grabbed them and smacked them against the side of her thigh, not bothering to hide her annoyance. Candy had been right. She’d always had this problem with Tater Wayne—the nicer she was to him the more he misinterpreted her kindness. The time had come to make things clear.

“Please don’t bring me any more flowers, Tater.” At the risk of sounding snippy, Cherise decided honesty was the approach. “I like you as a friend, but I don’t have any interest in you romantically.”

Tater’s eye began to ricochet at double speed. “Oh,” he said, his work boots shuffling in the crunchy leaves. “Well now, I figured as much. Anyway, these ain’t from me. They was here when I showed up to clean the gutters.”

“What?” Cherise bent her elbow to examine the mixed bouquet and saw it was wrapped in florist paper, a dead giveaway that Tater hadn’t raided someone’s garden to win her affection. She put her nose down into the delicate pink roses, daisies, baby’s breath, and ferns. Cherise frowned and looked up at Tater once more. “So who are they from, then?”

He shrugged. “Heckifiknow. I best be getting back to work ’cause Garland pays me by the job and I still gotta run some urns for Viv. You know, Spickler’s Hardware and the post office.”

Cherise smiled. “Ah.
Err-ands
.”

“That’s what I said.
Urns.
” He looked at her suspiciously. “You don’t even talk normal these days.” With that, Tater Wayne jumped off the sagging porch and headed toward a tall aluminum ladder he’d propped against the far side of the house.

“Hey, thanks for all your hard work,” she called after him.

He gave her a salute and a smile.

Cherise tucked the flowers under her arm and cautiously stepped over the threshold. Immediately, her nostrils were assaulted by the presence of mildew. One quick glance around the living room and Cherise was certain that everything made of fabric would have to go—the rugs, the couch, the curtains, the kitchen chair cushions.

She went through the room and opened every window that wasn’t stuck, relieved that the fresh spring air helped her eyes to stop watering.
A good sweeping up, my ass,
she thought. Well, at least there was no wallpaper or wall-to-wall carpet to be dealt with, and the wood floors and trim could be scrubbed back to life with oil soap. Anything else would sparkle after some vinegar and elbow grease. A little fresh paint probably wouldn’t hurt, either. Of course, paying for a cleaning service was out of the question, and how she’d accomplish all this scrubbing and sparkling while running a daily newspaper she had no idea.

Her mind snapped back to the editorial meeting that morning. Granddaddy hadn’t even bothered to show up, leaving Cherise to sit at the head of the conference table pretending to follow along as Jim Taggert discussed the day’s “news hole,” and Mimi ranted about the FBI’s tight-lipped media relations policy and how Carlotta Smoot McCoy refused to give an interview.

“The lady is crazier than a sprayed roach,” Mimi had said. “She went off on me about how I’d never lost a sister and wouldn’t understand her pain and that the newspaper had failed her family for over forty years and she wasn’t about to do us any favors now.”

“She’s pretty traumatized by this,” J.J. said. “Be kind to her, but keep trying.”

That’s when Cherise decided that, as publisher, she should contribute to the discussion. “If Ms. McCoy doesn’t want to talk we can’t force her,” had been her brilliant appraisal.

J.J. lowered his chin and stared at her from under raised eyebrows. “Madam Publisher,” he’d said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Just yesterday you wanted to bring the sexy back. Well, I hate to tell you, but a background piece on Barbara Jean’s angry family is about as sexy as it’s going to get at the moment.”

Cherise hadn’t known how to respond to that. Again, she was baffled by the way J.J. alternated between kindness and snarkiness with her. It was almost as if he were keeping her off balance on purpose. “Continue,” she had said with a wave of her hand. Too late, she realized the queenly gesture had been laughable.

Cherise took a deep breath of mildewed air, reminding herself that she was doing the best she could. Once she’d reviewed the
Bugle
’s financials, she’d have a clearer picture of how she could help the paper get back on its feet. That was her area of expertise anyway, not news gathering. She decided that in the future, she’d resist the temptation to offer her opinion in editorial meetings.

She wandered past the living room and into the kitchen. It was dingy but intact, except for the battered old refrigerator, with its door hanging off its hinges. That was destined for the junk heap. Everything else seemed usable—the deep porcelain farm sink with a pump handle and wooden drainboard, a mammoth old stove that would probably survive the apocalypse, tall maple cupboards, bead-board wainscoting, and the same narrow-strip white pine floors that ran through the rest of the house. The utilitarian round oak table and four ladder-back chairs resided in the middle of the kitchen, as always, though the centerpiece was a recent addition. At some point in the past five and a half years, a big chunk of plaster had fallen from the kitchen ceiling to the tabletop, almost as if the house itself were daring someone to notice it was falling apart.

She laughed aloud at the irony. Not so long ago, she’d spent nearly sixty thousand to upgrade her Harbour Island kitchen, adding an environmentally controlled wine cooler, dual convection ovens, a separate beverage service island, and the finest black granite and brushed steel money could buy. Yet she never once cooked in that kitchen. In fact, she’d rarely even poured cereal into a bowl or prepared a cup of coffee in it. Catered dinner parties were the only times the kitchen was used for its intended purpose.

And here she was, two years later, her only asset a quarter tank of gas and, if she wanted any privacy, no choice but to cook for herself. Right here. In this Little House on the Freakin’ Prairie kitchen.

Cherise shook her head as she opened one of the cupboards, taking down a dusty old Mason jar from the top shelf. Wincing, she turned it over to shake out the dead insects, then removed the florist paper and stuck the flowers in the glass jar. The bouquet was too big and the jar too small, but it would have to do for now.

She began to work the water pump, still laughing at herself. She’d graduated summa cum laude from the University of Florida, and landed a great job at one of the biggest accounting firms in Miami.

Pump. Pump. Pump.

She’d put in three years of accounting grunt work before she was moved to the auditing division of their Tampa office. She’d earned a reputation for sniffing out inconsistencies and rose quickly through the ranks. Two years later she was an account manager in their consulting division, specializing in forensic accounting.

Pump. Pump. Pump
.

She started dabbling in real estate—it was a no-brainer in Florida at the time. She started with flipping a few single-family residential properties. Candy invested about ten thousand, and together they began flipping residential and commercial. At the three million mark, Candy sold her various businesses and came in full-time. The profits really started to flow. When they reached six million in assets, Cherise left the accounting firm and sank everything she had into the business.

Pump.

They more than doubled their net worth in a year.

Pump.

They bet it all on a single commercial deal.

Pump
.

Fourteen million—gone. Her personal savings—gone. All the people she thought were her friends—gone. Her dream home—gone. Evan—gone. Everything—gone.

Gone. Gone. Gone.

Cherise suddenly stopped her futile effort to get water out of the beat-up contraption. She was out of breath, she’d broken out in a sweat, and tears were forming in her eyes. She swiped them away. If she wanted water for her mystery flowers, she’d be getting it from the lake.

Then it dawned on her—of course water wasn’t coming out of the stupid pump! It had to be primed first! How many times had she watched her father and grandfather pour buckets of water into the fill cap near the well?

Cherise leaned on the drainboard and laughed at her own ignorance. What other basic things had she forgotten how to do? Could she catch a trout out of Pigeon Creek if she absolutely had to? Could she operate Granddaddy’s lawn tractor? The chainsaw? Could she patch up a hole in the rowboat?

Slowly, her gaze moved toward the window over the old sink. Tentatively, Cherise reached up to pull aside the blue-and-white checked curtains and smiled at the serene beauty of Newberry Lake, its deep mountain water edged with the lace of early summer. Though the view was lovely, her stomach clenched with a sharp sadness.

It had been a July night twenty-three years ago. Her mother smiled and sang to herself as she washed dishes by hand at this sink. A warm breeze ruffled the curtains and touched her mother’s strawberry-blond hair.

As usual, Cherise and Tanyalee had been fighting like cats. Her parents had exchanged angry looks and deep sighs and separated their daughters. Cherise’s mother took her into the kitchen and asked her to put away the leftovers, which made Cherise furious, because her father was out on the porch reading aloud to Tanyalee. Why had she gotten chores while Tanyalee got books with Daddy?

It’s not fair!

That was the complaint Cherise was prepared to lodge with her mother when she slammed the refrigerator door and spun around.

But the words wouldn’t come.

Cherise stood transfixed by the sudden transformation of her ordinary mother in the ordinary room. The sun had partially dipped behind the mountains and shot a beam of its richest light directly through that little kitchen window, gilding her mother’s skin in gold. In that instant, her mother became magically beautiful, a singing angel framed by blue and white checks, with her eyes closed and her sweet, high voice causing a seven-year-old girl to forget what had been bothering her. In that moment, Cherise expected bluebirds to start twittering around her mother’s head, like in the movie
Cinderella.

“Do you still love Daddy?”

“What?” Her mother’s yellow-red hair whipped around her shoulders when she turned her head, laughing. “Of course I do, sugar! I’ve loved Daddy since the first time I laid eyes on him! Now what in the world made you ask me something as silly as that?”

Embarrassed, Cherise shook her head and looked down at her feet. “You and Daddy seem angry sometimes, is all.”

Her mother chuckled. “Sweetheart, it’s a full-time job to keep you and your sister from clawing each other’s eyes out. If your daddy and I seem angry it’s because we’re exhausted from refereeing the two of you all the time! I swear, you two need to learn to share. It’s just not right how you girls can’t get along.”

Her mother dried her hands on her apron and bent down to hug her little girl. She smiled at Cherise. “Sugar, you’re the oldest, you know. It’s your responsibility to set a good example for your little sister. You need to show her how to be nice and how to take turns. That’s your job.”

Cherise nodded. She’d heard this before, of course. “I’ll try, Mama.”

And that’s how it happened that a few weeks later her mother and father were found dead in a little beach rental in Nags Head, where’d they’d gone in search of “a moment’s peace” as Aunt Viv had described it.

After they died, Cherise wanted to be dead, too, but she somehow kept breathing, sleepwalking through her days and dreaming at night of that lost moment, when her mother was golden and warm and alive, her hands in the soapsuds and her face turned to the setting sun.