Color Me Bad: A Novella Read online

  Patty stood. “Put me down for the same time next week, and then after that, I’ll be gone for a while.”

  Now she had the attention of everyone in the shop, including Rachel, who was getting ready to leave.

  “Where are you going?” Rachel asked.

  Patty couldn’t even say it without grinning. “I’m going to Italy.”

  “Oh my word, I would love to go to Italy,” Rachel said.

  “How long are you going to be gone?” Vera asked.

  Patty’s smile widened. “A month.”

  They groaned, and then they squealed. The women were still talking about it when Patty June left.

  She had purposefully parked a block away so that she could show off the new look, and it was working.

  She saw people in the window at Granny’s Country Kitchen pointing and staring. She waved and kept walking. Myra was putting a new display in the window of the flower shop when Patty June passed. Patty tapped on the glass and waved, stifling a giggle when Myra looked up and dropped the bowl she was holding. Water splattered up her pant legs all the way to her knees as Patty kept walking.

  By the time she got to the car, there was actually a line of people standing on the curb across the street, staring in disbelief. She knew the look would be shocking, but she was a little irked that they were so blatant. Impulsively, she pulled out her cell phone and took a picture of them. When they saw what she was doing, they scattered.

  She snorted beneath her breath as she got in her car and drove away. Big bunch of cowards. They can dish it out, but they sure couldn’t take it. Fine with her. She had a lot of thinking to do while she was gone, like what she was going to do with the rest of her life when she got back.

  •••

  Willa Dean Miller had not been home for lunch in ages. Partly because Harold’s insurance office was in what used to be their garage, which limited parking if he had customers, and partly because Harold always ate nearly everything at supper, so there was never anything left over for the next day to eat at noon. But Patty June’s offhand comment had planted a seed and Willa Jean was going home—just to make sure Harold wasn’t cheating on her, too.

  When she turned the corner on their street, instead of driving all the way to the house, she parked in the middle of the block and began walking the rest of the way. A part of her felt silly for acting in such a suspicious manner. But she never would have believed Pastor Clymer would cheat on his wife and he had. This was something she had to do for herself, and Harold would never have to know.

  The sun was warm on the top of her head. Her heels made little clip-clop sounds as she walked. A butterfly flitted across her line of vision on its way to the roses blooming on the other side of the street. Willa Dean had always admired those roses, but today their picture-perfect blooms were taking a backseat to the high-noon investigation.

  Clip-clop, clip-clop went the heels of her shoes, marking off the distance to the front door of her house.

  Mrs. Mason’s black and white cat was lying on the top step of her porch licking its balls. It was a bit unseemly, although Willa Jean supposed that could be excused because it was a dumb, four-footed animal. But she was in no frame of mind to be generous with the dumb two-footed kind.

  Clip-clop, clip-clop, only a few more yards to go.

  In a way, this was all Harold’s fault. If he hadn’t turned into such a cold fish, it would never have crossed her mind that he might be cheating.

  “Yoo-hoo! Willa Dean! How y’all doin’?”

  Willa Dean cringed. Her next-door neighbor had just walked out onto her porch.

  That Sue Beamon has probably been watching me ever since I got out of the car. Dang nosy woman.

  “Hi, Sue. I’m just fine. Thank you for asking.”

  “Did your car quit on you?” Sue called out.

  Willa Dean frowned. If Sue didn’t shut the hell up, Harold would know his wife was coming and the sneak attack would be a bust.

  “No. I’m walking for my health. See you later.”

  Sue smiled and waved and went back inside, but Willa Dean knew she was still watching from behind the curtains.

  Clip-clop, clip-clop.

  The closer she got to her house, the faster her heart began to beat. What was she going to do if she found out something she didn’t like? She was honest enough to admit that it all came down to exactly what he was doing and how badly she still wanted to be a married woman.

  There were no other cars in the driveway except Harold’s six-year-old Jeep, which meant he was home and probably didn’t have any clients in the office.

  She dug the house key out of her purse as she went up the steps, and then opened the door and slipped inside. The moment she closed the door behind her, she stepped out of her shoes and then listened, trying to figure out where Harold might be.

  She was certain he wasn’t in the kitchen eating lunch because she would have heard the clink of silverware against the dishes. It was a habit he had that drove her crazy—that and filling his bowl with dry cereal in the morning and then crushing it down with his hand so he could get more in the bowl before he poured in the milk. Absolutely disgraceful.

  She took a few tentative steps toward his office, listening for the sound of computer keys clacking or the scratch of pen to paper, but it, too, was silent.

  A door opened somewhere in the back of the house. When she heard the creak, she recognized it as the door in their bathroom. She’d been asking Harold to oil that thing for a week and he still hadn’t done it; little did he know it would become a homing beacon, like belling a cat. At least now she knew where he was. He had simply gone to the bathroom, and she was making a big deal out of nothing.

  She was about to say hello and suggest they go to lunch at Granny’s Country Kitchen when she heard music. She frowned. “Moon River”? She hadn’t heard that in a good four years. It was the song they used to play back when they still had regular sex.

  Her heart thumped. All of a sudden she was scared. Did she really want to see what was happening in her bedroom, or should she play dumb and go on with her life regardless? Then she thought of Patty June kicking her cheating husband out of the house and lifted her chin. Whatever will be, will be, she told herself, and tiptoed down the hall.

  The door was ajar.

  She could hear the sound of footsteps sliding across the hardwood, like someone was dancing, which would be weird—unless Harold wasn’t alone. She clenched her jaw and pushed the door open just enough to peek in.

  Her heart stopped and then kicked against her rib cage so hard that she lost her breath. She slapped a hand over her mouth and backed up so fast she slipped and almost fell. By the time she got to the living room, she was shaking and breathless. She grabbed her shoes and purse, let herself out of the house, and ran all the way back to the car barefoot, well aware that Sue Beamon was probably watching.

  It wasn’t until she got in the car that she let herself feel the shock of what she’d seen. She needed to get away before she came undone, but when she tried to get the key in the ignition, she kept dropping it. On the fourth drop, she beat her hands against the steering wheel and screamed.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  Hearing herself curse was so startling that she finally got the car started and drove away. She drove all the way out of town without a destination in mind. What she wanted to do was hide, but she couldn’t. She had a decision to make and she needed to do it with a clear head.

  When she was a teenager, Gray Goose Lake was the place where everyone used to go park and make out. She hadn’t been there in years, so it would be the last place anyone would ever go to look for her. She wheeled off the highway and took the blacktop down to the landing, then parked beneath a grove of shade trees and killed the engine.

  Her heart was pounding as she opened the car door and got out. Then she did an about-face and staggered toward the back bumper and threw up until there was nothing coming up but dry heaves. When she finally quit, there was
as much snot on her face as there were tears on her cheeks. She pulled the tail of her blouse out of her pants to wipe her face and blow her nose. It was not her finest move, but need required invention. Still barefoot, she headed toward the lake.

  The water was so still that it looked like glass. Not a leaf was stirring, or even a blade of grass. It felt like everything was holding its breath, waiting to see what Willa Dean was going to do. She spread her jacket on the weathered wood and sat down, dangling her legs off the edge of the pier. A pair of wood ducks paddled by, and a big snapping turtle took offense at her presence and shoved off shore into the water and swam away. She looked down at the ripples it left behind, then took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

  A thousand thoughts ran through her head, everything from confronting Harold with the truth, to jumping in and swimming toward the middle of the lake. She would be too tired to swim back and it wouldn’t be exactly like suicide, but it was still a cowardly way to die. Or, she could pretend she never saw what she saw. Did she have the guts to do that? Did she want to be Mrs. Harold Miller bad enough to lie to herself?

  She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there, but when her cell phone began ringing, she guessed it had been too long. It was most likely Precious, wondering where she’d gone. She thought about not answering, but that would create its own set of issues. Willa Dean was known as a punctual woman, and the last thing she wanted was for her secretary to alert the local police and have them put out a bulletin listing her as missing. Then she would have to explain why she was hiding out at the lake, so she cleared her throat and answered the phone instead.

  “Hello.”

  “Uh, Willa Dean, it’s me, Precious. I didn’t remember you telling me you weren’t coming back this afternoon, so I got worried. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I should have called. Something came up. Just take names and numbers, and I’ll call them all back tomorrow.”

  “Sure thing,” Precious said and disconnected.

  Willa Dean had just told a lie and felt guilty. She wondered if that was how Harold felt when he turned his back on her in bed. Their relationship was a lie. The sorry bastard. Why had he bothered to get married if he didn’t want the life that came with it?

  Her truth was an ugly one, but it did finally explain why the elastic in her panties kept wearing out so fast. Harold had at least forty pounds on her and was obviously squeezing his fat ass into them on something of a regular basis. Lord. All that hair and manly bulge spilling out from under her dainties! She’d probably die with that image burned into her brain. And that red lacy bra he’d been wearing. It wasn’t one of hers, which meant he’d actually gone to the trouble of buying his own, which offered yet another set of questions, like where the hell did he hide that stuff? Had to be in the office. That had always been off limits. Now she knew why.

  Another thought shifted to the forefront. He’d been wearing makeup—her makeup. Damn it to hell, she spent good money on her makeup so her skin wouldn’t break out and he was smearing it on his whiskery stubble. She could brain him gladly for that alone.

  Her shoulders slumped. Her chin dropped toward her chest. What to do? What to do? She remembered Oprah having a show about people like this once. She couldn’t remember the proper terminology, but it didn’t mean he was seeing another woman or, for that matter, another man. So did she tell him she knew? Did she have it in her to keep silent? Was it a big enough deal for a divorce, which would lead her down another road altogether? She would lose the house. It wasn’t paid off, and she didn’t make enough money at the travel agency to live alone.

  She thought of her Rose Garden Club and the Ladies Aide at church. She always read the Bible passages during the church play at Christmas and donated the best prizes for the silent auctions. How would that change? Did she care? Should she care?

  She sat for a long time, staring at the water while the sun slipped toward the western horizon. It wasn’t until the sky turned gray and the birds began coming in to roost that she got up and headed back to the car.

  She drove back into town and stopped at the pharmacy. It was fifteen minutes until closing. The store was empty except for the pharmacist in the back and Mitchell Avery, the clerk. Mitchell was a little strange, but after everything that had been happening in Blessings lately, he seemed to be in the right place.

  “Hey, Willa Dean.”

  She waved at Mitchell and kept walking, all the way to the back of the store, down the aisle where condoms were shelved, past the feminine hygiene products, to the bottom shelf below scented oils where the vibrators were sold. She chose one that ran on batteries, which were not included, and paused to gather some of those up as well before heading to the checkout counter.

  Mitchell’s face turned pink when he rang up the purchases, but he never said a word. He sacked them up, tossed the receipt into the bag, and looked her straight in the face.

  “I’m saving up my money to book a trip to New York City.”

  She paused. “Just let me know when you’re ready to go and I’ll find the best deal. I promise.”

  He smiled. “Thanks. Have a nice evening.”

  “You, too, Mitchell.”

  She got in the car and drove home, hoping Harold had started supper. If he hadn’t, they were going to Granny’s Kitchen to eat. Tonight was not a night for her to be anywhere close to boiling water and knives, and tomorrow was a new day for a lot of things, one being the bullshit being dished out to Patty June. She’d just gotten a dose of how life could deal you a felling blow without warning, and it wasn’t fun. What was happening to Patty June was about to stop.

  •••

  Conrad Clymer found a semipermanent address on his second day in Savannah, then began going through the help-wanted ads. There was no way a church would ever hire him again, and he wasn’t so sure he wanted the burden of trying to maintain a spotless conscience anymore. He was obviously no good at it, or none of this mess would have happened.

  He was sad on so many levels that it didn’t bear thinking about. He missed Patty June’s cooking. He missed the way her nose wrinkled up when she laughed. He even missed the nagging whine in her voice when he left wet towels on the bathroom floor.

  Well, he didn’t have to worry about the nagging anymore, and if the bathroom in this apartment got the cleaning it needed, he was going to have to be the one to do it.

  It had taken him over an hour just to unload the car. Climbing the stairs to the third floor over and over had been exhausting, but there was an upside. It might help him take off some weight.

  Once everything was inside, he began putting it up. The last thing he began to work on was setting up his computer. Having Internet access had been a deal breaker when he was searching for apartments, and he’d been lucky finding one cheap enough for him to take it. Once he got the computer up and going, he began searching online for available jobs in the area. The problem he had was lack of experience. He’d been a preacher all of his adult life. The only thing he was really good at beyond that was working with computers. He offered up a prayer and then began to search for listings in that field and hoped God wasn’t holding a grudge as big as Patty June’s.

  •••

  By the night of Patty June’s makeover, everyone who mattered in Blessings knew about her new hairstyle and that she was about to travel abroad. The husbands were still on the “bash Patty” track, but some wives were secretly envious and gave their husbands a hard look that quickly ended the comments. The winds of change were in the air, but the men still didn’t know it.

  Two days later, Patty June was in the kitchen when she heard the mailman drop the mail in her box. She put her cookies in the oven and went to get it. It had been threatening to rain all day and the sky was gray and overcast, which was why she was in the kitchen. When a day was gloomy like this, baking always lifted her spirits.

  She grabbed the handful of letters, went back to the kitchen to sort the mail so she could keep an eye on the coo
kies, and poured herself a cup of coffee before sitting down. She took a quick sip and then began putting bills in one pile, junk mail in another. When she saw the writing and the city stamped on a long, blue envelope, the skin crawled on the back of her neck. It appeared Conrad had settled himself in Savannah, which was fine with her. It was large enough that when she went there, she’d be unlikely to ever see him.

  She opened the envelope. A single note card fell out with an address. Now she had a location for the lawyer to mail the divorce papers. She laid it aside and picked up a rather ornate envelope that smelled like roses.

  Curious, she tore into it and then leaned back in her chair in disbelief. It was a personal invitation to attend a special tea hosted by the Rose Garden Club. She glanced at the date. That would be noon this coming Saturday.

  She wasn’t going anywhere else, so she might as well go see what the biddies had to say. She hoped it wasn’t going to be a public flogging, and then she sighed. She’d lived here her entire life, as had her parents, and their parents before them. It would be sad if all this mess caused her so much distress that she had to move.

  She noticed there was a number to RSVP. What the hell, she thought, and grabbed her cell phone. She quickly punched in the numbers and waited for an answer.

  “Miller Travel Agency. We can make your dreams come true.”

  She stifled a grin. They really needed to reword that. It could be misconstrued in a number of ways.

  “Hi, Precious. This is Patty June. I’m calling to RSVP on the invitation from the Rose Garden Club.”

  “Oh, hi, Patty June. So is this a yes or a no?”

  “It’s a yes, and tell Willa Dean thank you for asking me.”

  “I sure will, and Patty June…”

  “Yes?”

  “I just love your new hairdo. It’s amazing.”

  “Thank you, Precious. I like it, too.”

  She was still smiling when she disconnected. Now she had to figure out what she was going to wear. Did she go for shock value or understated class? Since they were the Rose Garden girls, she decided to go with understated class. The average age of that bunch was probably around seventy-five years old. She didn’t want to be responsible for someone having a heart attack over lobster rolls and sweet tea.