Happily Ever Never

6. Brooke

6

brOOKE

The house on Mockingbird Lane is small and white with blue shutters, ranch style, with a low white picket fence and a neatly trimmed yard. Clusters of marigolds are scattered like tossed jewels in the mulch that hugs the front of the house.

A few doors down, a man is running a lawn mower over an immaculate green lawn. Across the street, a woman is jogging while pushing a stroller.

As I walk up the front steps, I feel something heavy in my jacket pocket, and I hear jingling. I reach in to find a set of keys, which I pull out. There’s a decorative metal house charm attached to it.

“Thank you?” I say, to whoever or whatever is controlling this fictional universe. “Also, why am I here and when can I go home?”

No answer. I crane my ears and look around. I feel in my pockets again, hoping for a printed list of instructions.

I mean, if I absolutely have to kiss Lucas to get out of here, I guess I’ll take one for the team. Team Brooke. If it’s written down on a list, I’d have to, right? I’d have no choice to find out if those lips are as pillowy soft as they look—if it was printed on a list of instructions for me.

But no, my pockets are empty. So I guess Lucas’s lips are safe for now.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Give me a hint!” I shout. The man who’s mowing his lawn looks up at me. I wave at him and he goes back to his landscaping.

With a sigh, I open the front door and walk in.

I stand in the foyer for a moment, half afraid that someone will come barreling out of a doorway and accuse me of breaking and entering.

Well, I do have a key, so I think it’s okay for me to be here?

I move through stealthily, silently, bracing myself for someone to pop out of a room screaming, “Who are you and what are you doing in my house?”

The living room furniture consists of a faded floral-print grouping of a sofa and a couple of overstuffed chairs clustered around a glass-topped coffee table piled high with a stack of hardcovers. There’s a crochet rug, and the ruffled yellow curtains are held back with white tiebacks. On the walls are framed theater posters and playbills.

In the kitchen, I find a note on the counter from a company called Maid Marion Cleaning Service, which makes me smile a little because that’s such a Serena Lovelace kind of name.

The note says, Welcome home, Susie! We’ll be back next Thursday. There’s food in the fridge. Susie—that is, me—must be paying for weekly maid service for this empty house. I guess that’s why the house isn’t dusty and there’s a faint smell of Lemon Pledge in the air.

The kitchen has a small formica table with four chairs. The ruffled curtains have sunflowers on them, as do the canisters on the counter.

I walk over to the fridge and find that it’s stocked full. There’s bread, cheese, butter, milk, salad fixings, salad dressing, eggs, a roast chicken, and in the freezer are half a dozen frozen meals.

Good timing, because I never ate dinner and my stomach is rumbling. I pull out a frozen lasagna and make myself a quick dinner, using the microwave to heat it up.

After I eat, I put the dishes in the dishwasher and start exploring.

There are pictures scattered on the living room and kitchen walls that give me a strange, dizzying sense of disorientation. A man and a woman I’ve never seen before stand with me as a small child, then a grade schooler, then a middle schooler, then a high schooler. I mean, it’s not me, but it sure looks like me.

There are framed playbooks on the wall, and pictures of me in costumes up on stage. So in this universe, I was into acting, not set design.

On the living room wall is a yellowing newspaper article about the car crash that killed Mr. and Mrs. McGillicuddy, Susie’s parents, while she was away at grad school.

What a bizarre thing to display.

“Convenient plot device,” I murmur, and burst into tears.

I head over to the pink-and-yellow floral couch and collapse into it. I’m crying for two people I’ve never met, two people who may not even be real.

It’s still terribly sad, though. They were only in their fifties; they should have had so many years ahead of them. They should have lived to see their daughter get married, and to spoil their grandkids.

I have to believe that they’re still together somewhere, that they’re happy and free from pain.

I guess it reminds me of my own parents, too, and of their mortality. I wipe tears from my cheek with my arm and look at the bookshelves on the wall facing me. Reading was so important to me growing up. We didn’t always have a lot of money, so my parents would buy books at library sales or yard sales, and my mother would wrap them up in a bow and some wildflowers for me, and it felt like Christmas morning every time.

Kids sometimes picked on me for going to school in old shoes and secondhand clothes. Reading was my and my dad’s thing, my refuge. Even as his mind slips away from us, these days, he can still read to me.

Is my mother trying to call me and not getting through? And if Lucas Sheffield has gone missing from the real world... the press will go crazy and the company might collapse.

I take a deep breath and close my eyes, clenching my fists and releasing them. I open them again. I can’t do anything about it tonight. Tomorrow, Lucas and I can do our best to leave town and get back to work, and if not... well... the only other thing I can think to do is try Serena’s crazy idea.

That is, if Lucas will cooperate with me, and I’m afraid that he won’t.

With a sigh, I get to my feet and resume my explorations. There isn’t much to the house. Kitchen, living room, bathroom, and a hallway leading to the bedrooms.

There are only two bedrooms, one of which is the master bedroom, with a sleigh bed, a cherrywood dresser, and framed watercolor paintings of nature scenes.

Susie’s bed has a wooden headboard with a hand-painted woodland scene. It also has an alarming yellow-brown stain on the ceiling, which looks like water damage. I wonder what I’m supposed to do about that.

I mean, this is a fictional universe, but my conscience won’t let me ignore it. Let’s see, tomorrow is Saturday...

There’s a yellow pages sitting on the kitchen counter, and a landline phone on the wall. If I’m still here Monday, I’ll call a plumber and have them come look at it, I guess.

This is so weird.

I look through Susie’s closet. It’s about a third full; it looks like she, I mean me, or whoever, left some stuff behind when she went away to college. There are skirts, blouses, and dresses hanging there, and when I check her dresser drawer, there are clean underwear and brassieres in my size.

I bet the shoes lining her closet floor will be my size too.

Just as I’m shutting the dresser drawer, I hear the front door open.

Oh, shoot. Does this universe have burglars?

Now I hear a man’s voice talking in the living room. I know it can’t be the McGillicuddys, because they are deceased.

Nobody mentioned anyone else living here. Nobody should be here. Can I get hurt in this universe? Can I be... murdered?

My heart thuds in my chest and I look around the room for a weapon. My gaze alights on a heavy metal candlestick. I grab it and make my way down the hallway.

Following the sound, I burst into the kitchen—to find Lucas talking on his cell phone and rummaging in the fridge.

“Hey!” I shout at him.

He straightens up, looks at me, and shoves his phone in his pants pocket, arching one eyebrow. “It was Miss Scarlett in the library with the candlestick?”

“Oh, ha ha. You nearly gave me a heart attack.” I set the candlestick down on the kitchen counter. “What are you doing here, Mr. I’m Smarter Than Everyone In Green Acres?” I demand. “Also, please, help yourself to my food.”

“Thanks, I will.” He pulls out an apple and bites into it, then says something with his mouth full.

“What did you say?”

He chews and swallows. “I was worried about you.”

“Say what?” I cup my hand around my ear. “What did you say? I thought I heard you say that you got yourself kicked out of the hotel and didn’t have anywhere else to stay.”

“That too.” He leans on the counter, scowling. “The Come On Inn, which is a name that makes me positively homicidal with its unnecessary cuteness, received so many complaints from my local fan club that they told me to leave. Also, I guess, in this universe, the inn is one of the things that Jasper Whitfield is going to destroy. I remembered the address of the home that Homicidal Henry said that your late parents lived at, and here I am.” He takes another bite of apple. “You didn’t miss anything by not eating there. Their dinner was also only so-so. Three stars.”

I fix him with a cold stare. “You didn’t happen to insult the name of the inn as they escorted you from the premises, did you?”

“I might have.” He arches an eyebrow at me.

“Why do you have to make life more difficult than it needs to be?” I sigh. “Also, you were talking on your cell phone. Who did you get ahold of?”

He shakes his head. “Nobody. I have tried every single person in my contact list, and I can’t get through. I was leaving a message.”

My shoulders sag in disappointment. “Well, rats. I was hoping you’d gotten through to someone.”

“Rats, indeed.” He glances at a grouping of pictures on the wall. “Cute pictures of you. Wait, how are there pictures of you here?”

“How is any of this happening at all?” I shrug. “How did you have a driver’s license with the name Jasper Whitfield in your wallet?”

“Fair point. Those people in the pictures... are they your real parents?” He leans closer to examine a picture of a teenage Susie McGillicuddy standing in front of the McGillicuddy Theater with her parents. “No. Doesn’t even really look like them,” he says, without waiting for me to answer.

“Lucas, it is creepy that you know what my parents look like.”

He gives me an impatient look. “No, it isn’t. You have a picture of them on your desk. Right next to your pink stapler. ”

Why is he snooping around my desk? “Don’t be dissin’ my pink stapler. It gets the job done.”

“I’ve heard you stapling reports and saying, ‘Take that, Lucas,’ by the way.” Lucas arches an eyebrow. “That’s not concerning in the slightest.”

I can’t quite hide my smirk. “You should get your hearing checked. That’s what I’d be concerned about.”

Then I glance at the living room. “Do you suppose the TV works?”

“We can check it out.” We head into the living room and he turns on the TV. There’s nothing but static.

“I guess with her parents deceased, it wouldn’t make sense to keep paying the cable bill.” I shrug and blink hard as tears start welling up in my eyes again.

“Are you... crying? You look like you’ve been crying.” Lucas looks at me with concern—like genuine concern, not his usual sardonic oh, there she goes again expression. He puts his hand on my arm, and a hot thrill of arousal shoots through my body, shocking me. “Don’t worry. We’ll get out of here. I’ll find a way to get us home,” he says. “I’m your boss. I should be watching out for you. I shouldn’t have let you leave the hotel without me, walking after dark by yourself.”

“I don’t think there are muggers in Green Acres. I’m not crying about going home, although I am definitely highly freaked out. I’m just a little emotional about the idea of Susie’s parents dying, because it makes me think about my own parents.”

Lucas nods somberly. “Yeah. Parents...” He trails off and shrugs. “Anyway, your dad is in a nice place, right?”

I’m still a little annoyed that he knows that, because it’s none of his beeswax, but he’s actually being unusually decent to me right now.

“It is nice. It’s not home, which is hard on him and my mom, but he kept wandering off and he can’t be left alone anymore, and for him to be safe at home, we’d need full time round-the-clock care, and we’d have to have alarms on all the doors and windows and... anyway, yes, it is a very nice place.”

An awkward silence falls. My gaze roves around the room, looking for something to help me change the subject.

I pick up one of the books on the coffee table. “ Heidi . My dad used to read this to me all the time. That was our thing. When I read, now, I still feel connected to him.” I give Lucas a sidelong glance. “I think that’s why I got so mad when you hunted me down at lunch. Reading is my way of feeling close to my dad still.”

“Oh.” Lucas blinks. “I shouldn’t have tried to make you work through lunch.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

“If I promise to let you have your lunch breaks, you won’t quit.” He says it as a statement, with a little bit of a question hovering at the end.

I sigh. “I don’t know, Lucas. The hours are very, very long. There’s no time to enjoy life, to do anything fun, or to just relax and do nothing.”

He nods. “I know. The McRawlins contract has me running around like crazy. We’re at risk of months of work going down the drain. My father’s calling me every day about it, and if it falls through, I’m afraid he’s literally going to have a stroke. Another stroke.”

“But it’s not just the McRawlins contract.” I shake my head at him. “Before that it was the Yoshimoto deal, and before that it was the Schneider properties. It’s always something.”

He doesn’t answer, just frowns, and my heart aches a little for him. On the rare occasions when I have free time, at least I’m capable of enjoying it. I’m not sure that’s the case for him.

“It’s pretty late,” he says, glancing out the window. “We should get to bed. Tomorrow we’re getting up bright and early, and we’re getting the heck out of Dodge. ”

We both stand up. “We’re taking Serena with us, right?” I ask.

“If she’s willing to come with us.” He scowls. “I’m not exactly about to try to drag her along if she doesn’t want to. Given that she thinks I want to imprison her in my basement.”

“I wonder why,” I scoff.

We head down the hallway, and I throw the door to Susie’s room open. “You can sleep here. Let me just get some clothes,” I tell him, and I start grabbing some outfits. I bring them to the master bedroom, and return for shoes, bras, and underwear.

“Don’t look! I see you looking, you perv,” I say accusingly.

Lucas snorts. “They’re not even your underwear and bras. I’m just curious about things in this universe. I mean, this place isn’t really real; it can’t be. Do the clothes have brand name tags on them? Where do they come from?”

“Jeez, clothing tags are the last thing I’m thinking about. I saw a couple of clothing stores on Main Street. I guess that’s where people get them from.”

“But where are they manufactured? How closely does this universe copy our universe? And what’s that sound?”

There’s a crackling noise coming from overhead.

We both look up, as large parts of the ceiling collapse onto the bed with a crash. The air fills with plaster dust and we flee the room.

“Dang it! I should have known!” I groan, my arms still full of shoes and lingerie, as Lucas shuts the door.

“Should have known what? How could you have known the ceiling would collapse?” Lucas gives me a puzzled look.

“Romance novel trope,” I sigh. “A man and a woman in a house or hotel or cabin, with only one bed. It’s a way to get them into bed together.”

Lucas scowls, running his fingers through his thick, silky hair. “It’s... events in our life can’t be dictated by tropes. This doesn’t make sense. ”

“None of it makes sense. I think we’ve already agreed on that. There’s a couch in the living room. You can sleep there.”

“It’s way too small,” he protests.

“Well, what do you think the alternative is?” I say huffily. “There’s no way I’m sharing a bed with you. I mean, they don’t even have sex in Serena Lovelace novels until at least a third of the way through, and we’re still at the beginning.”

Lucas freezes, his fingers still in his hair. He stares at me, his eyes widening. And I realize what just came out of my mouth.

“What did you just say?”

“Nothing!” I cry out. “You... I mean... Go to bed! Sleep on the couch! Leave me alone!” My face is flaming red with embarrassment as I turn and run down the hall towards the master bedroom.

I toss and turn for hours before I finally fall asleep, and instead of my usual sex dreams about Lucas—okay, yes, that happened a lot back in New York—I actually have dreams where I’m in character as Susie McGillicuddy, dreams that feel so real I can smell and taste things. I’m on stage at the McGillicuddy theater, playing Pippi Longstocking, my parents are watching me from the wings, and they’re so proud of me...

I’m not sure which is worse—Lucas fantasies I can’t control, or feeling as if I’m living in another woman’s head.

I wake up with a violent start, half expecting to hear my mother’s—Mrs. McGillicuddy’s—voice summoning me to breakfast.