One Less Problem Without You (15 page)

I smiled. “And somewhere out there, there is a shop completely devoted to the care and feeding of aliens, and they're saying the same thing about witches.”

“Touché.”

“I was kidding.”

“Let's hope!”

I had to laugh. Prinny went on to tell me about rock stars who'd been in (they weren't usually ashamed), actors from local shows who claimed they were just doing research, and one local weathergirl with big dreams, big hair, and a pretty big budget for love potions and candles.

Honestly, it sounded like a lot of fun.

And something about the place really soothed me. I know it sounds crazy, but I felt like I was at home, even while I'd never quite felt so out of my element.

It was partly the smell. I'd never smelled incense that didn't smell like the old “hippie” variety, but Prinny was burning something called Antique Rose that made me feel like I was inside a Renoir painting, swirling in the color and warmth and safety of the brushstrokes.

“So why are you leaving Leif?” Prinny asked, looking me directly in the eye as soon as a lone customer had left.

I gave a short, dry laugh. “Do you really have to ask why?”

My attempted deflection didn't work. “Yes, unless it makes you uncomfortable or steps on your toes.”

“Not at all,” I lied. It was arguably her business; I just couldn't stand to admit what a fool I'd been. For so long. If I even tried to tell the whole truth, I thought I would probably shrink down to nothing, I'd feel so small. So instead I went for the overview, the kind of thing anyone can understand. “We just had some differences we couldn't get over. The kind of thing you ignore at first and then realize it's driving you crazy.”

“I've had that feeling before,” Prinny said. “Where someone is so hot for the first month and by the third month you cannot understand why he hasn't cut his stupid nose hair or whatever.”

“Exactly.”

“Except…” Prinny hesitated, then sighed. “You don't seem to be that kind of person. I can well believe Leif is aggravating, but I can't quite see you buckling under it. Is there something else?” She looked at me so kindly I almost caved in.

“Not really.”

“Then how come you came here? Why was I the only person who could understand?” She didn't quite smile, but her expression was so soft it gave the feeling that she did.

“Because…” I tried to gather my thoughts, but it wasn't so easy. “Do you want some tea?” I asked suddenly.

“What?”

“Tea. Remember how I make teas and tinctures?” I said. “It's become my main hobby now. Probably comes from my old days as a bartender, though I learned a lot about herbs in my job at the acupuncturist.”

“Bartender!” Prinny cried. “Tea sounds good, but I've got a full bar's worth of liquor in the back room from our holiday party six months ago. Would you rather have a good stiff drink?”

“If you can heat up some water, I can make the best of both worlds,” I said, feeling a surge of optimism.
This
was something I was good at. I wasn't good at talking, I wasn't good at being a wife, I wasn't good at being strong, I wasn't good at being an estranged wife, but, damn it, I was good at concocting.

And I needed a concoction.

I don't travel much, but I never left the house for long without at least some emergency herbal supplements. My problem with anxiety had been tremendous back in the day, and then my problem with tranquilizers had been even bigger once Leif's mother, a psychiatrist, began prescribing them in amounts that my Internet research told me were too great.

Sometimes I wondered if they were in cahoots—my husband and my mother-in-law—to either kill me or turn me into a nice, agreeable Sleeping Beauty.

That's what he'd married me to be, you know. He told me so himself. He'd wanted a wife who would be pretty (but not too pretty), mild tempered, agreeable, and impressive if he ever had to convince a jury of his innocence. He actually said that to me! And while he said it with a laugh, somewhere deep inside I knew he wasn't really joking.

I looked pretty good for him on paper, no matter what his ambitions were, and he had political ambitions
and
criminal tendencies. While I realize this didn't make him all that different from other people with political ambitions—especially in this town—Leif was smart enough to set himself up early so he could say he had a long-standing good marriage to this good woman with a middle-class background and good sturdy childbirthing hips.

He must have been really disappointed when it wasn't easy for me to get pregnant. I had been disappointed, that's for sure. But as the years have gone on, I find I'm more and more grateful that I didn't bring someone else into this mess. What would I be doing right now, for example, if I had a child? Would this be safe?

Would home?

Would anything for a Tiesman child be safe? Looking at Prinny, I didn't think so. Because she was the sweetest thing, honestly. There wasn't a bad bone in her body, it was easy to tell that. Why, then, did my husband hate her so much? It seemed to go beyond him resenting her inheritance, though he certainly did that. But no, it was more than that. It was like he hated her for
existing
.

For breathing.

I'd never really understood it, but now, talking with her gentle self and being as grateful as I was for her help under these weird circumstances, I understood even less about what had led Leif to this.

We sat back down, holding cups of my Lavender Lemon Balm Tisane with some vodka unceremoniously dumped in. “So tell me,” Prinny said, then paused to blow the steam off the top of her drink. “Is Leif not supposed to know you're here?”

“I'd
really
prefer he didn't.”

“Is that, in fact, why I was the only person you could turn to?” Prinny asked, then spared me the trouble of answering. “Sorry, I just thought we should get this out of the way. I get it, I just don't want you to feel like you need to maintain some sort of story, and I especially don't want to have to pretend I believe it.”

“So you…” I waved my hand around vaguely. “This is real? You're really psychic?”

“Yes,” she said evenly. “But it didn't require clairvoyance to figure out why you're here. I know my brother, and I know the signs of someone who has been abused in some way. You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to. I just want your promise that you won't tell
him
anything about my business. My business business or my personal business. We both know he'd like to destroy me, and I have to believe that you're not here to help him reach that goal.”

I was horrified at the very thought that she might believe I was here to harm her when she was being so kind as to take me in. “Absolutely not. I swear it.”

“Good.” She looked at her tea. “No poison in here?”

“Oh, yes—vodka.”

She laughed. “Excellent.” Then she took a sip, paused, and took another. “This is amazing,” she said, looking truly surprised.

“Good, right?”

“It's
really
good. Was it easy?”

“Oh, sure.” It was tea. With vodka in it. What was so hard about that?

But Prinny looked like a baby who was tasting her first ice cream. It was like I was a genius mixologist rather than just a neurotic woman who needed the occasional shot of herbal relaxation.

“And it's a mixture of teas?”

“Not even, it's just a few things thrown into boiling water and steeped. Honestly, you could do it with just about any herbs and spices you can think of, as long as they aren't toxic.”

“I feel like you're a genius,” she said with a laugh and took another sip.

“Then you just keep right on thinking that, sister,” I said, enjoying that someone else was finally taking me seriously. “You keep right on thinking that.”

 

CHAPTER TWELVE

Chelsea

When Chelsea got to the store that morning, Prinny wasn't there. She wasn't required to be; she was the owner. Most business owners don't spend every day in their shops. But Prinny was almost always there, so it surprised Chelsea whenever she wasn't. Suddenly she felt like a kid who'd just realized she was home alone and could do
anything
but then didn't feel the need to do anything differently than usual.

She clocked in, turned on the
OPEN
sign, unlocked the safe, counted the drawer, put it away, and then turned on the fairy lights that were wound with copper wires around the entire store. Then she waited. There wasn't an appointment on the books for several hours.

Though she wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball on the cozy chair-and-a-half that sat in the corner and sleep until the front-door bells jingled, she couldn't. Not only because if Prinny found out she'd kill her, but because she had lines to memorize. Another audition to prepare for. The results page to reload six hundred times.

She sat down in the chair and refreshed the audition results page for the production of
Finding Neverland
that she'd been waiting weeks to hear back on. For the first time, it did not read “Audition Results to Come…”

There was a cast list.

Chelsea took a deep breath and flipped the phone over for a second to collect herself.

It was okay if she didn't get it. She didn't quite have enough savings to travel like she would have to if she got it. It was going to tour up and down the East Coast. She still had rent to pay. She would have to put it on credit, which would not be ideal.

But on the other hand, she had felt good about that audition. Damn good about it, in fact. She'd been emotional and raw, and projected her voice to the back of the room. Not to mention the fact that she'd had excellent onstage chemistry with the guy who was already cast as J. M. Barrie.

And traveling up and down the coast … getting away from here, getting away from everything, that would be so good. She needed that. She really, really needed it.

She cracked her knuckles and then flipped the phone back over.

Sylvia Llewelyn Davies
 …
Maria Kingston

Chelsea's stomach and heart expanded and then deflated completely. She didn't get it. The part was given to someone else. It didn't matter how many times she looked at it. The part wasn't hers.

The worst part was that it didn't just go to someone else, it went to Maria Kingston, of all people.

Maria Kingston had the same look she did. They could be cast in the same roles, and it seemed always to come down to the two of them. The difference between them was Maria's offstage personality. You'd love to imagine that this doesn't matter, but it does. She was flirtatious and charming. The kind of girl you had an inside joke with after one conversation. She won people over right away. She always did. She was confident in a way that, when Chelsea had tried to imitate it, made her feel like a fraud instead of like an actress.

She put down the phone and stared out the window. Of course it was cold, gray, and raining today. Exactly the kind of day that brings forth bad news. Sunny days were for celebrating. Rainy, gray days were for hating that bitch Maria Kingston.

The worst part about Maria was that she
was
good. The other worst part was that she
wasn't
a slut. She was a flirt, but only in a friendly way. She didn't sleep her way to the best roles. She was just good. She was just nice.

She was just better than Chelsea. She was just more charming than Chelsea.

It was as if Chelsea had been asking
Who's the fairest of them all?
And the casting directors had agreed for years that
she
was.
Of course
she was! She was the best! The fairest! The winner.

But now?
You're fair, my lady, it's true, but now there is another one fairer than you.

Maria Fucking Kingston.

Was this how careers ended? Actors' lives changed? Would she, not quite thirty, have to begin auditioning for hag roles (apt, considering she was now envisioning herself as the old witch arriving at Snow White's door with a poisoned apple) until she hit forty and could play nothing more than a corpse or a mummy?

Was this business truly so unfair?

She had heard it all her life, of course, but how much could she possibly care as a young woman? Those warning stories were for other people, not for
her
. She was young, and she would be young forever and ever.

But she wouldn't. She already wasn't.

And suddenly that fact was hitting her full force.

After another twenty minutes of feeling sorry for herself, she pulled herself together. She was being stupid. Far from the plucky Katharine Hepburn type she idolized and wanted to cultivate over a lifetime. She'd lost out on one (more) audition. There would be a million reasons, personal or otherwise, but whatever they were, she couldn't allow this one instance to make her quit.

She would not do that.

So she took the stapled sheets out of her bag that she needed to work on for that next audition.

It was hard to focus. Her mind kept drifting back to her recent failure and the possibility of another one.
What if
…? had become a scary question. She just stared at the highlighted lines—ones she had highlighted while actively thinking of this as a backup audition, back when she felt pretty sure she'd get the
Neverland
role.

What a fool.

The phone rang a couple of times. Chelsea—always the professional outwardly—answered with her dreamy work-voice and walked people through their rainy-day cancellations.

There were a handful of them, and with each one Chelsea envisioned a different corner of a cozy home that had kept that person from going out on a rainy Sunday.