The Big Picture (36 page)

“If he came crawling back, I would smile. And let him stay at least for a while. Don’t need no fancy gifts, just maybe some kisses. With a little sweet talk, might convince me to be his missus.”

Her voice grows in strength and volume. “He’s dashing. He’s daring. He’s so supah fly. We have that in common, my Sam and I. You, Sam, are my one and only cutie. I love you for your kindness, your smile, your old geezer booty.”

I open my eyes and watch Maxine’s face, tight with uncertainty, fear, and maybe a little too much BOTOX. Sam glares down at her, his arms crossed.

“Maxine hearts Sam, the whole world would agree. Now when will that baldie get down on one knee?” She drops her paper and stares at her man.

Moments tick by. The cicadas chirp in the distance. I swat a mosquito on my arm.

“Well?” she hollers. “Are we gonna get married or what?”

“Married?” Sam yells through the hole in his window. “You tossed me out like stinky trash, Maxine Simmons. You dropped me one too many times.”

“You need me, Sam. That old bat Mabel Doolittle is no good for you.”

He gestures toward his window. “And you are?” Sam shakes his head. “Go home, Maxine. Take your granddaughter home and get her to bed.”

Maxine’s bottom lip quivers for just a split second before she recovers. She pulls herself up tall and turns on her heel. “Very well. I can tell when my art is wasted. Let’s go, Katie.”

I climb out from the shadows, and we settle back onto the bike.

Maxine wordlessly steers us out of the yard and onto the street. Sharing in her defeat, I help pedal.

But when I look back, there’s Sam.

Still at the window. Watching his old flame ride away.

Chapter thirty - eight

“HAVE YOU HEARD FROM YOUR mom?”

I nearly drop the phone as I listen to Tate’s voice come through my new cell. “No. What would make you ask that? Of course not.”

“Hey — no reason. Just checking on you.” I take some deep breaths and wait for my heartbeat to still. “Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah. I think so.” Except for nearly jumping out of my skin just now. “As long as I focus on all I’ve got here in In Between.” But occasionally my mind drifts to the fact that my mom is a felon on the loose, and she couldn’t love me enough to make it all work. But then I remind myself that she’s not me. And I’m not going to be her. Ever.

“Some of us in Middleton miss you.”

What does that mean? “And I miss . . . Middleton.” Take that. “So how is Sunday school?”

“Not the same since you’ve left. I recruited Ashley, but she’s a little monotone.”

“So Frances mentioned she invited you to Chihuahua Days.”

“Yeah, I don’t know if I can make it. I do have a friend who lives near In Between I’ve been meaning to visit, but he might be too busy for me next week.”

I swallow disappointment. “You don’t want to miss a celebration of tiny dogs.” I hear Millie call me from downstairs. “I’d better go.”

“Hey, Katie?”

“Yeah?”

I can hear the smile in his voice. “Am I still your Middleton best friend?”

“The one and only.” And with a goofy grin on my lips, I run downstairs and join Millie in the kitchen.

As soon as I see the box of take-out pizza, I know something is wrong. Millie doesn’t order pizza. She makes pizza. And it usually includes weird vegetables and things that are so healthy they’re practically dug straight out of the dirt.

I open the box and sniff. Pepperoni with extra cheese.

“What’s for lun — ” Maxine skids across the kitchen floor in her ballet flats. “Oh.” Her eyes narrow. “Pizza?
Real
pizza?”

Millie sets three plates on the bar. “Let’s eat.”

But nobody moves.

“No tofu sprinkles?” I ask.

“No.”

Maxine cocks an eyebrow. “No soy cheese?”

Millie shakes her head.

I pull out a stool and sit down. “What’s going on?”

My foster mom flops a steaming piece on a plate and slides it my way. “Have you heard from your mother?”

“What?” Is this the question of the day?

“The police think she’s not too far away from here. There’s a good chance she’ll contact you, if she hasn’t already. Do you know anything?”

I take a bite, and even though it burns my tongue, I continue to slowly chew, buying some time. “I know nothing.” And that’s true.

“You haven’t talked to her?”

“I . . .” I can’t turn my own mother in. Can I? I shake my head “I don’t have any idea where she is or — ”

Millie pulls a Diet Dr Pepper out of the refrigerator and places it at my elbow. This is serious. “I know she’s your mother, sweetie, but you have to help the police if you know anything.”

“Millie, I haven’t seen anything of her since she left me in Middleton.”

My foster mom considers this for a few long, agonizing seconds before she nods. “Okay. But Katie, your mom . . . she could be dangerous. We don’t know what kind of influence she’s under. Under no circumstances are you to meet with her. And if she calls, you need to alert one of us as soon as possible.”

In other words, Katie, be afraid of your mom
. So uncool.

Maxine covers a yawn and climbs onto the stool next to me. “So sleepy.”

Millie passes her mother a plate. “Must be that kind of day. When I stopped in at the Valiant earlier, Sam could hardly keep
his
eyes open.”

Maxine chokes on a bite. I whack her on the back until she slaps my hand away.

“Did he say what was bothering him?” I ask, and Maxine kicks my good ankle.

“He said it was nothing. Just a varmint causing a ruckus in the middle of the night.”

I study my fingernails. “Sam should’ve called animal control. They could’ve shot it for him.”

“Uh-huh,” Millie agrees. “Or tranquilized it and hauled it off.”

Maxine’s head turns slowly until her eyes are level with mine.

“Problem?” I droll.

“Nothing that can’t be fixed.”

Not with my help. Nope, I am out of the Maxine-helping business.

“I’m going back to the Valiant to finish getting it ready for the Chihuahua Days next week. Friday evening we’ll have community bingo. And the date auction will be onstage Saturday, of course. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it, Mom?”

“Bingo? Whoopee.”

“I take that to mean you won’t be helping Katie and me set up today?”

“Nope.” She swigs from her root beer mug. “I have . . . work to do.”

A pepperoni falls out of my mouth. “What kind of work?”

“Secret old lady stuff.”

The worst kind of stuff there is. “Just make sure you don’t break anything.” My voice drops. “Again.”

ON THE WAY TO THE VALIANT, my eyes scan the town for signs of my mom or the truck I last saw her in. I’m so sick of this constant state of nervousness, like she’s going to jump out and scare me any moment. I just wish the police would find her so I wouldn’t have to worry about it.

Or she’d do the right thing and turn herself in like she said.

“Wow, the place looks great.” I haven’t been in the Valiant since I left last month, and if I needed any more assurance that I’m truly home, this theatre is it. The familiar smell hits me, and I inhale deep like it’s expensive perfume.

“We got a local artist to design all the Chihuahua decor.” Millie leads me toward the stage. “And we’re still working on the backdrop for the date auction. I thought we’d just clean up today, get all the dust out and polish everything ’til it glows.”

I walk backstage to get the supplies to shine the wooden portions of the theatre seats.

I find Sam with his head stuck in between two shelves, mumbling beneath his breath. “Silly, frivolous, prideful — ”

“Sam?” I tap him on the shoulder.

He shrieks like a girl, rips his cap off his head, and clutches it to his chest. “Wh-what do you want? Oh, it’s you.”

“Hello to you too.”

He puts his cap back in place. “Sorry. Just a bit on edge today.” His
face changes, and he jabs a pointy finger toward me. “What do you have to say for yourself, young lady?”

“Um . . . I need the wood polish?”

“Oh, sure.” He digs into the closet and produces it. “No! Blast it! That’s not what I mean, and you know it. What in tarnation did you think you were doing last night? I thought you were a smarter girl than to get up with Maxine in the dark of night and go riding through town.”

“Sam — ”

“Don’t give me those puppy dog eyes. It won’t work. I know you’re not the one responsible for breaking my window, but your presence there last night says you encouraged Maxine’s harebrained idea.”

“I did not encourage it. I didn’t really know for sure what she was up to.”

“Maxine’s ideas are crazy in the best of conditions, but any of them that require the cover of night are absolutely insane. You don’t have to be an honor student to get that.”

“I did have to take a summer school class — ”

“Don’t try to sass your way out of this. It’s dangerous for two girls to be out at night like that. And I assume James and Millie didn’t know?”

I snort. “Um, no.”

“I couldn’t sleep at all last night for worrying if you two had made it home all right.”

I grab the supplies out of his hands. “You were worried about Maxine?”

“No. A pack of wolves could’ve carried her off, and I wouldn’t have cared. But I did worry about you.”

I focus on the twitch at the corner of his eye. “Sam Dayberry, you’re lying.”

“You haven’t been off your crutches long. I was concerned that all that pedaling — ”

“You weren’t just worried about me.” I step closer. “You still care about her. You were up all night because you thought about what she said.”

“Thought about what she said?” He slaps his knee. “That’s a good one. Would that be the line where she said I needed to see a plastic surgeon or the line in which she mentioned I needed to crawl back to her?”

Hope pumps through my veins. “You know perfectly well it’s not about the words. She did that — for you. She humbled herself and read you
poetry
. Homemade poetry. She doesn’t even
like
poetry, but she knows you do.”

Sam’s face pinkens and he studies his old black shoes.

“You have to give her another chance.”

“She’s out of chances!”

“Is she?”

“She’s fired up because I’m seeing Mabel Doolittle. That’s all this amounts to. She doesn’t want me, but she doesn’t want anyone else to have me either.”

What girl hasn’t felt that way?

“I don’t think that’s it this time. I really don’t. You should have seen her last night after we left your place. She was . . . quiet. Withdrawn. Sad.”

Sam blinks a few times. “If she was sad at all, it’s because she knows I’ll send her the bill for my window replacement.”

I grab a few more rags from the closet and shut it tight. “That’s not it, and you know it. She’s changed, you know. Maxine dumped you so you’d pull out the big guns and woo her back. It blew up in her face, and you called her bluff and let her go. And now that she knows what she’s lost, she wants you back.”

“Katie, I’m too old for this reality-show dating stuff. I’m not the Bachelor.”

“You’re a hot commodity in this town among the senior ladies. But only one of them wants you bad enough to ride across town in the dark and yell in verse, right?”

He rests his chapped hand on my head. “Get to work, girl. Millie will be looking for you.”

“Give it some thought, okay? She loves you. She just doesn’t know
how to tell you. You’re like a bad cold she can’t shake, but she’s finally realizing she doesn’t
want
to shake it. She
wants
to be sick.” That didn’t come out quite right.

Sam quirks a brow, and his tired eyes look away.

But not before I see something glimmer there.

Chapter thirty - nine

JAMES WINKS AT ME FROM his seat when Sister Shonda Leon takes the stage for her solo. The Bible may say make a joyful noise, but my foster dad and I decided some time ago we’re not sure the Lord had heard the likes of Sister Shonda yet. She could pierce an eardrum with one note. And I laugh to myself because behind James’s kind, pastoral expression lurks a man praying for mercy and earplugs.

I watch Maxine pretend not to stare at Sam Dayberry and the frumpy woman sharing his pew, and I try
not
to notice Charlie occasionally peering at Chelsea Blake. And in the middle of taking notes during James’s sermon, I feel an occasional twinge of homesickness for a little church in Middleton and twenty snotty-nosed kids. And one blond-haired boy who carried me up Stony Peak toward the sky.

Charlie’s arm rests on the back of our pew, and as I sit next to him, I wonder what’s in his boy’s brain. Does he want Chelsea back? What exactly does an arm behind me mean?

After the service the churchies pile into cars and trucks and head over to the Burger Barn for lunch. I have no idea where Charlie and I stand or even where I want us to stand, but I
do
know I want a chocolate shake.

I order and sit at a table with Nash, Frances, and Charlie. Two seats are left open, and when Hannah comes through the door with Chelsea, Frances waves them over.

“Katie,” Charlie whispers in my ear. “Are you okay with Chelsea hanging out with us?”

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I . . .” Charlie struggles with an answer. “I don’t know. I know she wasn’t your best friend before you left.”

I rest my hand on his. “She’s
your
friend. I get that, and I’m fine with it. And you’re right — she really does need people right now.”

His fingers clasp mine. “Thanks. It’s important.”

“I know.” And I pull my hand away when the girls sit down.

The Burger Barn doesn’t serve it up speedy like McDonald’s, so while we wait for our orders to be called, I head for the ladies’ room.

When I come out of the stall to wash my hands, Chelsea is there, applying lip gloss in front of the mirror.

“Hey.” She wears less makeup than she used to, but the girl is still disgustingly beautiful. And I want to hate her for it.