“Oh man, you don’t want to hear these—”
“I definitely do.”
She touched the trackpad, and Casey found himself captivated by the movement of her long, delicate fingers. After a moment, she said, “Okay, here’s a good one. ‘Dear George, This isn’t a breakup, but a blind date story.’” She glanced over at Casey. “A little unorthodox, but I’ll allow it. Blind date and first date horror stories are almost as good as bad relationship stories. Sometimes better.” She turned back to the screen. “Where was I . . . oh yeah. ‘My roommate set us up; he was a friend of her boyfriend’s.’ A recipe for disaster awaits,” George murmured, then went on, “‘She told me he was excited for me to call him. So I did, and he had no idea who I was. Strike one. We agreed to go out, but he didn’t make any sort of plans in advance. Strike two. He ended up taking me to his favorite sports bar, where we could barely hear one another over a playoff game blasting from every TV in the place. Strike two and a half. Then he ordered some wings. He didn’t offer me some, but that was okay—I didn’t want any, because he’d ordered them heat level nuclear. He hoovered them all up, one right after the other. His face turned beet red, and he started sweating. Not perspiring. I mean dripping with sweat. He used up a pile of napkins wiping his face off every few seconds. He watched the hockey game on one of the TV screens for a few minutes, then announced he was going to take me home. Needless to say there was no second date. Regards, Mild Wing.’
“Eh, not bad,” George said, closing the message. “I’ve heard worse. It might make it onto the site, although I usually prefer the Tales of Woe to have a little more meat to them.” She scanned more of her new messages. “Okay, let’s try this one. ‘Dear George, Love your blog, love you . . .’ blah blah blah,” she rushed through the second half of the sentence. “Okay, moving on: ‘I need some advice. I am a woman of a certain age, but I feel young at heart. My dear husband passed away many years ago, and after a while I became interested in dating again, but it is difficult to find men my age. I have enjoyed the company of a widower for many years, merely as a friend, although I thought I had been quite clear that I want a more intimate relationship with him.’ Ooh, hot mama,” George said with a grin. “‘It took a while, but I finally communicated my intentions to him, and we began dating. We have been on several dates over the past few weeks, and I like him very much. Now I face the hurdle of trying to convince him to, how shall I put it, get physical? He seems clueless about it; whenever I make any advances, he changes the subject, moves away, or falls asleep. Do you have any advice? Sincerely, Not Getting Any Younger.’”
“Is he falling asleep or
pretending
to fall asleep?” Casey asked.
“Yeah, this one sounds pretty aggressive, doesn’t she?”
“It reminds me of Mrs. Preston. She started chasing Harvey Nostrand about a month after his wife died last year, and she finally wore him down. He never looks very comfortable with her, though.”
“Mrs. P’s dating Mr. Nostrand?” George gaped, then laughed. “Poor guy! I could totally see him doing something like that—pretending to fall asleep to put her off—”
Suddenly George stopped short, grew serious, and scanned her computer screen again.
“What?”
“Um, nothing. It’s just . . . what if . . . what if this Not Getting Any Younger person
is
Mrs. P?”
Now it was Casey’s turn to laugh. “Seriously?”
George wasn’t laughing. In fact, she looked downright stricken. “Seriously.”
“Well . . . no, come on. It’s a big wide world out there. You have a million readers, right?”
“I wish. But I get a fair amount of traffic, sure.”
“So what are the odds that it is Mrs. P talking about Harvey? Pretty astronomical.”
“I suppose.” She thought a minute, then shook her head. “You’re right. I’m being paranoid. I just don’t want to find out my neighbors are e-mailing me details of their love lives!”
“You’d rather just get the town gossip the old-fashioned way instead—over the counter at Nora’s diner.”
“Exactly.”
“Read me one more while I finish my sandwich? I’m really enjoying these.”
“Sure. Just give me one second . . .” She hastily clicked through several items, then opened up another browser window.
“What are you looking at now?”
“My site stats.”
“And what do they tell you?” Casey leaned over to look at the screen too. He realized he had a lot more to learn about blogs than he expected.
“Mm. Just as I thought.” She turned the laptop toward him to show him a map. “What do you see?”
“A very large red circle.”
“And the location?”
He looked closer. “Is that centered over Marsden?”
“This is a breakdown of the traffic my blog’s gotten in the past couple of weeks. A lot of it has been coming from right here.”
“I suppose that’s to be expected,” Casey said, licking some mayonnaise off his thumb.
“I always used to get some traffic from Marsden, but this is out of control.”
“Does that prove these letters came from here?”
“No,” she admitted. “I can’t trace e-mail addresses.” She sighed and sat back, rotating the office chair from side to side in a small arc.
“Okay, one more. Please.”
“You getting into this stuff, Bowen?”
“That doesn’t make me a voyeur, does it?”
“Maybe. I’ll have to keep an eye on you.”
Chapter 15
“Okay, what about this one?”
“Goose?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” George said hurriedly. “I found another one—another e-mail that sounds like someone from Marsden.”
She didn’t know why she was phoning Casey to talk about this, when she could have confided in her sister. Well, no, on second thought, not Sera. But surely Jaz would have understood. Maybe it was because she’d been with Casey when she’d found the first e-mail, which may or may not have been from Mrs. P. Since then, she’d spent the last three days vacillating between “No, couldn’t have been,” and “Oh my God, it
was
her.” She was getting dizzy, and something told her talking to Casey would stop the spins. She hoped, anyway.
“Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack. Got a minute? Listen,” she said, not waiting for him to say yes or, worse, no, he didn’t have time to talk her down. “‘Dear George, I love my husband, but lately I’ve been really bored with our relationship and pretty lonely too. He works in the evenings at a business he owns, leaving me alone all the time. I have to admit I’ve been thinking about having a fling, or even leaving him. To be honest, I did spend some time with another guy, but before I could do anything I might regret, I chickened out. We live in a very small town, and I’m afraid of what my friends and neighbors might think. Can you help me? Sincerely, Empty Nest.’”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then Casey said slowly, “Okay . . .”
“See?”
“Not really.”
“Are you kidding? This one is obvious! It’s Charlie Junior’s wife.”
“Whoa, Goose. Hold on. Lots of women are bored in their marriage, and lots of men work a lot and leave their wives alone—”
“You missed it, didn’t you?”
“Missed what?”
George stood up and started pacing the living room, while Amelia watched her, fascinated, from her spot in front of the TV. George had turned on
Caillou
to distract her while she called Casey, but at this point her frantic auntie was way more interesting than some animated bald kid. “The hints! The clues!”
“What are you talking about, Scooby?”
She made an irritated noise. “First, she said she’s in a really small town. But then ‘
chickened
out’?”
“Yeah, so?”
“‘Empty
nest’?
”
“Not getting you.”
“The thing about the chicken guy!”
“What chicken guy?”
“Charlie Junior told me he found chicken feathers in his bedroom and he didn’t know where they came from!”
“Kinky.”
“He said he thought his wife was having a fling with the guy in the chicken suit who stands outside the Chicken Shack.”
“I did
not
just hear that. Wait—
while
he was wearing the chicken suit?”
“There might be some evidence, but he wasn’t sure. Anyway, I think it’s her. I’m afraid it’s her. Tell me it’s not.”
Casey chuckled. “It’s not.”
“Okay, what about this one?” She hurried back to her laptop, ignoring the exaggerated sigh that reverberated in her ear. “‘Hi, Down on Love. I’m a big fan of the blog. I never thought I’d be asking for advice, but now I am. Recently I came home unexpectedly and found my husband dressed up in women’s clothes, from a hat all the way down to the shoes. I’m not sure how I feel about it; I might be okay with his, um, hobby? However, I am really upset that not only did he take money out of our household fund to pay for the clothes, but his outfits are nicer than anything I own. What should I do? Sincerely, Frumpy.’”
“And you think this is someone we know . . . why?”
“Because I saw Skip Dwyer, the odd jobs guy, shopping in Missy’s Hits for Misses the other day. In the gently used couture section.”
“So?”
“So he was holding the clothes up to
himself
in front of a mirror!” George paused. “Are you laughing at me?”
“No, I’m picturing Skip in a dress and heels. He’d look pretty hot, come to think of it. If he shaved off his beard.”
“And his wife, Rachel, gave me a funny look when I passed her on the street this morning!”
“Rachel Dwyer gives everybody a funny look. She has a lazy eye, remember?”
“What am I going to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“They expect me to give them advice. And I’ve made it quite clear that if you write to my blog, you’re always going to get the same advice: ‘Dump his ass.’”
“Or her?”
“Or her. But how can I do that if I know these people? How can I be responsible for the end of a relationship or, worse, a marriage?”
“People aren’t really taking your advice seriously, are they? No offense.”
“I don’t know. They might.”
“So you may already have been responsible for lots of relationships ending.”
“But I didn’t know those people. I know
these
people.
Might
know these people,” she amended.
“Why does that make any difference?”
George didn’t like the turn this conversation was taking. Still restless, she scooped up Amelia, who was starting to fuss now that her cartoon was over and her teething ring had gone soft and warm. She jiggled the baby on her hip as she made her way into the kitchen. Amelia tried to grab the phone, but George distracted her with a fresh teething ring from the freezer.
“Goose?” Casey prompted.
“It just does,” she grumbled, deftly opening a jar of peanut butter with one hand and hooking a glob with her forefinger.
“You’ll figure it out.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“I’m sure these aren’t from anybody local.”
“Promise?”
“If I could, I would. Just remember the odds, okay?”
“Okay,” she grumbled reluctantly.
“So listen, while I’ve got you on the phone, I wanted to run something by you.”
“Is it the photos? Did you get Celia’s permission to use them?”
Casey had shown George the photos Celia had taken for his brochure, and she’d said they were perfect to dress up the Web site she’d build for him to publicize his place.
“No, not yet. It’s something else. I thought maybe it’d help you chill out, too.”
“I don’t need chilling out, thank you.”
“Don’t you?”
“Thu’ up,” she said around a mouthful of peanut butter.
“Aren’t you not allowed to say that around the baby?”
“Who thez Amelia’thz in the vithini’iy?”
“I hear heavy breathing and squealy grunts. Unless that’s you. Something you want to tell me?”
She swallowed the last of the peanut butter and said, “Okay, fine. Sell me up the river to Sera; see if I care. Now, what are you talking about?”
“Right. So, I’ve been looking for ideas for the farm—you know, different events to hold and stuff—and I was thinking: Taste of Whalen.”
“Taste of Whalen? We all know what Whalen tastes like: a fruit cannery, broken dreams, and despair that it isn’t Marsden. Just like always,” she said of the neighboring village, which wasn’t half as interesting as their own town.
“Marsh Acres is—”
George snorted. “Marsh Acres. They just should have named the place ‘The Swamp.’”
“Marsh Acres,” Casey started again, sounding fake-irritated, “is having an evening of local cuisine and entertainment—”
“Are you reading from an ad?”
“Will you stop interrupting me?”
“Sorry! Go on.”
“I want to check it out, see if it’s something I could do here.”
“That’s a good idea. How come Marsden hasn’t done a ‘Taste of’ thing already?”
“I don’t know. We’ve got other food-related events, like the end-of-summer village-wide picnic and the Christmas movable feast on Main Street, but we don’t have anything that brings our local restaurants together in one place, nothing that encourages them to go all-out and make some really nice dishes. I was thinking of making it a fancy do, maybe feature some of Paulie’s local wines.”
“I thought his wines were pretty much purple-colored moonshine.”
“Okay, I’m not sure how good his stuff is, but he’s local, and that’s what matters at these things.”
“So why are you telling me about this?”
“I want you to come with me.”
George dropped the jar of peanut butter. On her foot.
“Goose? You still there?”
“Yep,” she grunted, hobbling over to the nearest chair. Now she’d been paid back for slamming that can of beans into Casey’s junk.
“So what do you think? Want to go?”
George bugged her eyes at Amelia and mouthed silently, “What do I do?” Amelia gnawed on her teething ring, then let out an eardrum-piercing squeal for no apparent reason.
“Amelia says yes,” Casey said.
“Or she made a poo she’s particularly proud of.”
“You’re comparing my special invitation to a poo?”
“It’s Whalen.”
“It’ll do you good to get out of the house.”
“I’m never
in
the house as it is.”
“So that’s a no, then?”
Still stunned, George stammered, “No, no, I’ll go. When is it?”
“Next Friday night. That’s enough time for you to change your mind at least three times, but I hope you don’t.”
“No guarantees.”
“Oh—and it’s black tie.”
“Oh my God.”
“A
date?!
”
“It’s not a date. It’s . . . research.”
“Oh, honey, no,” Jaz said smugly as she gingerly lowered herself to the floor to start her back exercises. “It’s a date. You probably haven’t been on one for so long you’ve forgotten, but that is
definitely
a date.”
George turned to Sera. “Need a ruling.”
Her sister made a face and said nothing at first. Then, “I suppose it’ll be what you make it.”
“What’s
that
supposed to mean? And who sewed your lips into that weird Church Lady pucker?”
“It
sounds
like a date. I thought you weren’t interested in dating.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why are you going on one? With Casey Bowen?”
“Wait a minute.” George looked up from peeking in Amelia’s diaper; it was mercifully empty. For the moment, at least. “You like Casey.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like Casey. I just . . . think you should be careful.”
Now both George and Jaz stopped what they were doing to stare at her. Amelia did too, probably wondering what everybody was so incredulous—and, for once, silent—about.
“He’s the most un-psycho guy George could possibly date,” Jaz said.
“We’re not dating!” George threw in.
“I didn’t say he was a psycho, either.”
“Then what’s your problem?” Jaz challenged her wife.
“Don’t gang up on me,” Sera snapped. “I’m just saying George is . . . vulnerable. And she’s spent all this time saying she’s not interested in dating, and now . . .”
“Well, I think they’re adorable together.” Jaz’s words became muffled as she lowered her face to the carpet.
“Ew. ‘Adorable’? Now you make me want to cancel.”
“Don’t you dare!” she admonished, looking up abruptly. “I think you’re good for each other.”
“Now you sound like we need fixing.”
“Maybe you do.”
“We’re not broken.”
“Sweetie, everybody’s broken in one way or another. And we’re all looking for the one person who can help the broken part heal.”
“I happen to be of the mind that nobody can heal us but us. The only purpose for a significant other is to have someone to hang out with.”
Jaz’s smile was more of a grimace as she slowly pushed up on her hands. Panting a little, she said, “Then you’ve never had a decent significant other.”
“I could have told you that.”
George absently started playing with one of Amelia’s toys, stacking some primary-colored, graduated rings on a plastic spike, which, of course, inspired Sera to snipe, “Challenging your mind again, little sister?”
“Bite me.”
“Aren’t you wasting time? You should be shopping for a dress,” Jaz reminded her.
“Ugh. Don’t remind me.” George liked shopping as much as the next chick, but formal wear was a little out of her league. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had to buy a fancy dress. Oh wait, yes she could—her prom. And even then she hadn’t had a date. Was she really so pathetic that she couldn’t recognize an actual date when it was staring her in the face? Was this occasion way more loaded than she was letting herself believe?
Was she really going out on a date with Casey Bowen? After all this time?
This was utterly, completely bananas. And yet she was going, wasn’t she? Why yes, she was already thinking about suffering through shopping for a dress.
“Say hey to Mrs. P for us.”
And that was where she’d gotten her prom dress. Some things never changed.
No, George decided. No Missy’s Hits for Misses—not this time. She just couldn’t bear to go into Mrs. P’s shop; she couldn’t look at the woman ever again without thinking about the e-mail asking for advice on how to get some octogenarian to drop his trousers. If it had been her. And George still wasn’t convinced it hadn’t been, no matter that Casey had explained how unlikely it was.
And—oh God—what if Mrs. P had heard through the grapevine that she and Casey were going to Taste of Whalen? She’d never be able to face her. That wink, that leer, the inevitable probing questions, the details that would be broadcast to the rest of the town within seconds of George’s leaving the shop, not to mention what kind of garish, sequin-laden dress the well-meaning proprietor would try to foist on her . . . Nope, nothing doing. There were other high-end clothing shops in town—certainly more than had been around when she last lived in Marsden—and she was going to investigate them.