The Lure of White Oak Lake (7 page)

Ida huffed but wasn’t too put off to take the joint from Clarice’s hand. She inhaled deeply and exhaled a lungful of smoke. “All right, tell me what the leaves say.”

Clarice leveled her gaze on Betsy. “They say not to meddle. Things between Morgan and Jaclyn have to unfold as they will.”

Betsy looked like a rabbit caught in a snare. “I haven’t. I’ve barely talked to Jaclyn, and I was only going to bring Morgan a pie.”

“But you talk to Maddie all the time, and she jumps in with both feet.” Ida took another long drag from the joint and passed it back to Clarice. “Have you told her anything about this?”

“No, but I still don’t understand why she can’t be a part of our group. She is Jaclyn’s sister after all, and I know she loves her the most.”

“Maddie can’t keep a secret to save her life,” Clarice said.

“And I don’t want her telling everyone that I smoke weed.” Ida patted her hip. “I have bursitis, you know.”

Betsy didn’t look convinced.

“It’s the power of three,” Clarice explained. “Any more would throw off the…juju.”

Ida nodded as though this reasoning made all the sense in the world to her.

M
organ stood on her porch the next morning looking at Clarice’s artwork. There was a beach scene painted on the mailbox, chunks of cement lined the road painted with angry faces and the words keep out beneath each one. Morgan never had a flair for art, and apparently, Clarice didn’t, either. She walked back inside, wracking her brain, thinking surely there was something she could do that would be fun and useful.

She set her coffee cup on the floor as she sat on the couch and frowned at her laptop. Not a single hit on her résumés. She’d applied for every job she was remotely qualified for. Since she’d graduated college, she worked at Menagerie. It was all she knew, and it was intimidating to know she’d have to start all over somewhere else. Her father had always told her to find a good job and stick with it, but that mentality had gone by the wayside. Corporations no longer wanted experience, they wanted cheap. There was someone else sitting in her desk now, making half her salary, and spitefully, Morgan hoped that Menagerie got what they paid for.

With her foot, she closed the lid to the laptop, no longer willing to look at her empty email inbox, and began to ponder other things. She’d felt as comfortable talking to Jaclyn as she did Celeste, yet she’d never told her best friend why she’d not visited her father more when she learned how serious the illness was. She’d thought a lot about that before she’d gone to bed and chalked it up to the alcohol. But clarity comes in the morning as they say, and Morgan decided that she’d enjoyed Jaclyn’s company, and there was no harm in making a friend. It would make the time she had to spend at the lake tolerable.

Morgan bent down to pick up her cup, wishing she had a coffee table to put it on, and that was when the idea hit her. When she got out on her own, she couldn’t afford much in the way of furniture and had refinished old pieces she found at secondhand stores and garage sales. She could do the same for the cabin, and it wouldn’t cost her much. Furnishings would make it feel more like a home, and she’d have a hobby to keep her occupied.

She grabbed her keys and hit the road. Morgan thought about stopping in at The Lure and asking Jaclyn for the lay of the land but decided that exploring would take more of her plentiful time. At the intersection of Lake Shore and Main, she took a right, where she passed a diner and a couple of old warehouses. A left turn took her into a residential area where small wood-framed houses sat in neat rows beneath oaks and pines. Another left brought her out to White Oak Grocery. She continued on Burberry Street until she came to a building comprised of storage lockers. Several were open with a sign out front that said, “Sale.”

Morgan eyed several pieces with interest as she walked into the office. A portly older woman with thinning brown hair greeted her with a smile.

“I’m interested in a few pieces of furniture you have outside.”

“And I’ll make you a great deal, Morgan. I need to clean out a few lockers, so I’m very motivated.”

Morgan was taken aback. “How did you—”

“Oh, everybody knows who you are. This is a small town, a newcomer makes a splash. I’m Shawna Richard,” she said as she walked around the counter and grabbed Morgan’s hand. “Maddie’s sister-in-law, she’s Jaclyn Wyatt’s sister.”

“Oh, okay, nice to meet you.”

“Atlanta,” Shawna said dreamy-eyed. “I always wanted to go there, but the farthest east I’ve ever gotten was Biloxi. That was before Katrina, mind you. Now my daughter’s been everywhere. She’s at Claiborne now, got married to a nice boy from Jeanerette last year. I went back to my maiden name of Richard after the divorce. Now you want to talk about someone who traveled, that was Charlie. I didn’t mind so much because we bickered a lot when he was home. But then I started seeing lavish dinners on the credit card receipts, and Charlie Boyet was cheap. But when I saw a purchase at,” Shawna lowered her voice to a whisper, though no one else was around, “a purchase at a sex shop, I knew that rotten bastard was cheating on me. Now you want to talk about mad? I put all his things out in the yard and burned them, and that was mild compared to what I did to him when he got home.” Shawna sighed. “Maddie and Heath were nice enough to bail me out of jail.” She fluffed her hair with one hand. “Now what was it you were interested in?”

Morgan paid more for the coffee table and bookshelf than she would’ve liked but decided not to haggle on the price for two reasons. First, Shawna had admitted that she’d been jailed for doing something to her husband, and Morgan imagined all sorts of grisly possibilities. Second, Shawna talked nonstop, and it took Morgan nearly two hours to make her purchase. And the kicker, she’d have to make two trips since both items wouldn’t fit in the Jeep at the same time.

Shawna was still yammering away when Morgan drove out of the lot with the coffee table. She cranked up the music in an attempt to purge Shawna’s voice from her mind and tried to decide on painting the wood or restoring it. At Main Street, she made a right and parked on the curb in front of the hardware store. Inside it smelled of feed, and birds chirped as they flew in and out of the open bay doors. Morgan searched the aisles until she found the sanders.

“May I help you find anything?”

Morgan turned to the woman who was at least an inch shorter than Jaclyn, her hair was a shade darker, but she had the same thin nose and mouth as her sister. “You’re related to Jaclyn, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” she said with a smile and spun around. “As you can see, there’s no hairy hump on my back, and there isn’t a bell tower in White Oak Lake. Jaclyn often refers to me as Quasimodo, but my name is Maddie Richard. It’s very nice to meet you, Morgan.”

“Nice to meet you, too. I just bought a couple of pieces of furniture from your sister-in-law.”

Maddie made a face. “She talked your ear off, didn’t she?”

Morgan smiled sheepishly and nodded.

“If you can stand her prattling on, she has some pretty good buys. I had my eye on a beautiful set of lawn furniture, but the owners finally came in and paid the rent on their storage unit before their time limit ran out. Did she start off by telling you that Heath and I had to bail her out of jail?”

“She did mention that, yes.”

Maddie rolled her eyes. “She does that all the time to the newbies so they’ll be hesitant to haggle. She did break his nose, though. Shawna’s got a mean right hook. Of course, Charlie was lucky if he was five-foot-two and probably weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet.” She pointed to the sander. “Doing some restoration?”

“Yes, on the coffee table, but the bookshelf is painted a hideous pink. I’m wondering if I should save myself a lot of effort and paint it something else.”

“I’ve got a deep brown that would cover nicely, or if you want to go white, you’ll probably need a primer. We have that, too.”

Morgan raised a brow. “White may brighten up the corner I have intended for the case. I’m really undecided on what I should do. Maybe I’ll just sand on it some first.”

Maddie reached up and pulled a packet of sandpaper from the shelf. “This has varying grades and will work with the sander you have there.”

“Perfect,” Morgan said as she took the paper. “I guess that’s it then.”

“Don’t need anything else?” Maddie said with a smile. “Maybe a water hose?”

Morgan felt her face heat. “Ever have a bad day when nothing goes according to plan?”

Maddie folded her arms. “I have two children, three if you count my husband. Need I say more?”

“I read you loud and clear. Where are the hoses?”

“Follow me.” Maddie led Morgan through the store into the patio section where she selected a midgrade hose she hoped she wouldn’t have to duct tape anytime soon. “I’m glad you moved in so close to my sister. She’s surrounded by the older crowd on the other side of the lake, and I’m sure she enjoys having someone her age to chat with besides Skip.”

“Jaclyn’s very kind, and Austin is too.” Morgan followed Maddie to the register. “It must be nice having your family so close by.”

“I think so, but I drive Jaclyn nuts. I like to play matchmaker. She needs someone in her life whether she wants to admit it or not.” Maddie scanned the items and said, “Thirty-three eighty, I gave you the family discount. Normally, that sander is forty dollars.”

“Wow. Well, thank you.” Morgan ran her bank card through the scanner and signed her name at the prompt. “I’m sure the right guy will come along for Jaclyn,” she said, testing her hunch.

Maddie laughed. “Oh, no, darling, that’ll never happen.” She opened her mouth to say something else just as a forklift dropped a pallet of what looked like horse feed in front of one of the bay doors. Several of the bags burst open, and pellets spread out over the floor. Maddie frowned and put a hand to her forehead. “And that’s my husband on the forklift. I’d introduce you to him, but he’s about to go to the hospital as soon as I can get my hands on something heavy.”

“I’ll help you clean up. It’s the least I can do since you gave me the discount.”

“Oh, no, but thank you.” Maddie clenched her fists. “It’s about to get ugly in here. I suggest you run.”

“I’m gonna go,” Morgan said with a slight smile. “It was nice meeting you, and I’m sure Jaclyn will bail you out of jail.” Morgan hadn’t noticed if there were any other customers in the store, but if they were, they got an earful of obscenities.

Y
our new girlfriend is about to throw out her back,” Maddie said when Jaclyn answered the phone. “She’s trying to wrestle a bookcase out of her Jeep.”

Jaclyn looked out the window. “Austin?” she yelled out as she pulled the phone away from her ear.

“I only ate half a pack of Skittles,” he said as he walked out of the storeroom.

“Before dinner?” Jaclyn bit her lip. “Would you run down to Morgan’s place and help her unload something out of her Jeep?”

“Can I have the rest of the Skittles?”

Jaclyn pointed at the door. “Go now before I pull your ear off.”

“I met her today,” Maddie said when Jaclyn put the phone back to her ear. “Beautiful smile, thin, though. Maybe you should cook her something.”

“Maybe you should get rid of your binoculars.”

“She thinks you’re straight. I told you that you needed to advertise more.”

Jaclyn closed her eyes. “How did my sexuality come up?”

“I just said you resented my matchmaking, and she said she was sure the right guy for you would come along. Heath happened before I could correct her. Are you gonna out yourself to her or what? Somebody in town is bound to mention it before you do, then she’s gonna feel betrayed.”

“Why on earth would she feel betrayed?”

“Because y’all were all friendly last night on the dock. You should’ve told her then.”

“You better hide those binoculars because when I get my hands on them, they’re going into the lake.”

“I didn’t see you, Ida did. Oh, they got the case out…Morgan’s right, that pink is vile. I can’t see into her living room, but I bet it would look good painted white.”

“Pink is definitely not her color.” Jaclyn blinked, realizing that she’d gotten caught up in Maddie’s snooping. “I’m gonna hang up on you now.”

~~~

“Boy, you’re killing me.” Morgan grunted when Austin jammed her into the railing of the deck.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, barely breathing heavy, even though the bulk of the weight was on him where he stood at the bottom step of the deck. “How come we’re not bringing it inside?”

“The weather’s clear, so I’m gonna leave it out here to work on.” Morgan took the last step up and backed slowly as Austin climbed the steps. “Set it down easy.”

Once they’d lowered it to the deck, Austin put his hands on his hips and circled the case. “If it had a bow, it would make a fine boat. It’s deep enough.”

Morgan wiped sweat from her brow. “For the regatta?”

“Yeah, it’d fit two people.” Austin looked at her. “You have to have two people per craft. None of my friends will let me pair with them because they say I’m too big and I’ll sink us.” He shrugged. “They sink anyway. Last year, Logan painted a cardboard box and sank like a stone two minutes after he and his partner left the dock.”

“What kind of dork makes a boat out of cardboard?”

Austin laughed. “My best friend. I wanna make a Viking ship, so I can wear a hat with the horns. I found a really cool one on the Internet.”

“Oh, yeah, those are cool,” Morgan said with a smile. As she gazed at the bookcase, a Viking ship formed in her mind. “You really think that would fit two people?”

“Sure.” Austin stepped inside. “Now you step in between those shelves.” He pointed to other end.

Morgan stepped in. “It might work. We’d have to put it in the water to know if it would float with us in it.”

Austin turned slowly. “Are you serious?”

“You think it won’t float?”

“I think it would. Are you saying you’d be my partner?”

Morgan shrugged. “I think it’d be fun. Oof.” She grunted when Austin grabbed her in a bear hug and yanked her out of the case.