Keep Talking

Chapter 1

Chapter One

“It’s not a mullet,” Bryn disagreed. “It’s a shaggy lil’ do.”

Bryn, wet hair freshly dyed black and half in her face, used her fingers to bring her long bangs forward. She needed the tiniest trim for them to land at her brow line in a flip without getting in her way.

“You know how many mullets I handed out before you were born?” Marta combed her hair in sections with the pointed end of a comb. “It’s shorter on the sides and the front than the back,” she said like she was offering a medical opinion. “That’s a mullet.”

“It’s true, honey,” Gloria shouted from the waiting room without looking up from her 2012 copy of People.

“But you look fantastic with your fun hair. When I was your age, all I wanted was a Farrah Fawcett cut.” She put her magazine down and met Bryn’s eyes in the mirror.

“But my Abraham, God rest his soul, thought it was too bawdy. But now he’s dead, and I don’t have enough hair to do it.

” She raised a set of unnaturally red eyebrows over her lemon yellow glasses as she imparted her wisdom.

Bryn couldn’t imagine Gloria running around Long Island in the 70s.

Well, she could, but she couldn’t see her deferring to anyone’s opinion, much less a man’s.

The woman she’d gotten to know over the last three years was as independent as she was opinionated.

Maybe having been a widow for a decade brought it out in Gloria.

“Fine, it’s a mullet,” Bryn relented. “But I’m going for Miley, not Billy Ray, okay?”

Twenty minutes later, Bryn was helping Gloria into the passenger seat of her Plantamonium work van.

Marta had given her the cool Juliette Lewis in a rock band aesthetic she wanted.

Despite styling old ladies all day, Marta always gave her the best cuts.

Better than Bryn could do with kitchen shears and a medicine cabinet reflection, anyway.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stop at the grocery store?” Bryn asked while they crawled through highway traffic to get to Gloria’s North Miami retirement community. “I’m going to be gone all next week,” she reminded her.

“I know, honey, your big book deal.” She reached over and clasped her hand over Bryn’s wrist. “This is going to be your break. You wait and see. I used to tell my Abraham all the time. I’d say, Abe you’ll see I’m right.

Now, I’m not into the hocus-pocus, but I’ve always had a sense of things.

Women’s intuition, honey. Do you kids still learn about that?

No, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have it.

You’re gonna tell your old friend Gloria she was right. You’ll see.”

“From your lips, G,” Bryn joked.

She got off at the exit for Gloria’s favorite grocery store anyway. The one with the seafood guy who always winked at Gloria and tossed in an extra tilapia filet.

Inside, time warped. An entire fifteen minutes evaporated while Gloria investigated an identical pair of Vidalia onions.

Ignoring a notification for a food pickup with a generous tip, Bryn bit back a sigh and leaned against the cart.

It was fine. Gloria wouldn’t ask for help, but she needed it, and Bryn needed the peace of mind to focus on her first duet without picturing Gloria living off canned tuna for a week.

She’d find a way to deliver plants all weekend, side hustle, and study Magpies’ first act.

Her stomach soared right into her racing heart when she thought about Magpies.

She’d been reliving the call with the producer on a loop.

She sent in her audition clip so long ago, she was sure she’d lost the job.

Being so new at voice acting, Bryn seemed to learn a thousand new things with every project she booked. Apparently, casting could take months.

She imagined how Vivian del Castillo reacted to the call.

It wasn’t her first time narrating a book from a huge publishing house.

It wasn’t even her hundredth. Maybe she didn’t even get a call.

One of her many assistants probably put it on a calendar for her while someone else prepped the novel.

Gorgeous Vivian del Castillo probably didn’t do any heavy lifting.

She probably didn’t even wave goodbye to her Downton Abbey-style staff before setting off on her yacht for the weekend.

* * *

“Now, honey, you remember to have fun, okay?” Gloria said after Bryn had gotten the overflowing reusable bags into Gloria’s condo.

“Don’t you be intimidated. You have so much talent, my glorious girl.

” Her hand was soft against Bryn’s cheek.

“Let me get my pocketbook.” She turned to face her neat living room. “How much were the—”

“Next time, G! I have to run,” Bryn lied. “My mom is waiting.”

She didn’t give Gloria a chance to insist. “I’ll have a check waiting for you next time, honey!”

“Uh huh,” Bryn tossed noncommittally over her shoulder while she raced to the van she’d left double-parked.

A community full of retirees meant there were always people ready to call the HOA.

She didn’t want to get Gloria in trouble again.

Not when mean-ass Mrs. Dixon was standing in her doorway pretending to water fake zinnias.

She picked up food delivery orders while she drove south for over an hour to rural Homestead.

Plantamonium, her family’s plant nursery, had been thriving for three generations.

It would be four when her little brother finished college and joined them.

As their grandpa used to say, her brother inherited the green thumb, but Bryn had been born with stars in her eyes.

Bryn rolled along the bumpy dirt road of the back entrance.

While the front of the nursery showcased all the big beautiful flowering plants and trees, the back was a triage center.

She dropped the van where it would be packed with whatever the hell she was carting next and went into the small office the size of a shed.

Sitting behind the old desk with an ancient computer and towers of paper, her mom looked up when Bryn pulled open the interior door that was chipped and faded because it wasn’t intended to stand up to the elements.

“Close that, Manuel only just got the AC working again.” Her mother gestured with a nod toward the loud window unit leaking into a pan on the floor.

“Jeez, Ma. It’s freezing in here.” Bryn closed the door and moved a stack of papers to plop into the chair next to the desk.

“When you go through menopause, I want to see—”

“Okay, Mom. I get it. Your body has become a sweltering prison,” she replied with a laugh. “Can I get the invoices for this afternoon’s deliveries?” She pulled her phone out of the back pocket of her jeans. “And remember, I’m not going to be available all next week.”

Her mother smiled. If Bryn didn’t dye hers black, they’d have the same straight reddish-blonde hair.

The same bright blue eyes. Bryn might’ve been her clone, but she’d inherited her father’s lean, square frame rather than her mom’s voluptuous hourglass.

As a kid, she’d always waited for the magical day puberty knocked on her door and she emerged stacked.

Now that she was twenty-nine, it was probably time to let the dream die.

“So, Vivian Taylor, huh?” Her mom pulled off her reading glasses and leaned back.

“Gimme a Break, Already! was must-see TV when I was a teen.” She grinned.

“I thought I looked so cool in a floral dress, denim jacket, and combat boots.” She sighed as if wistful for days long gone.

“The outfit didn’t work nearly as well for me, though.

God, I remember thinking Vivian Taylor was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. I wonder what she looks like now.”

“She goes by del Castillo,” Bryn said before looking down at the phone buzzing in her hand. “And I can’t believe there hasn’t been a new picture of her in, like, seven years.”

“You think she’ll let you get a selfie?” Her mom propped her elbows on the desk, chin resting in her hands.

“Crap,” Bryn muttered when she opened a text from one of her housemates.

His question, “did you know about this,” preceded a photo of their house covered in a fumigation tent.

In a blur of stressed texts conveyed in all caps, Bryn learned that after two years of complaining, their landlord had finally tented for their outrageous termite infestation.

Because he was a complete and total dick, he’d passive-aggressively informed them by a letter no one opened.

Now, they were all locked out of their house for a week.

“You’ll stay with us,” her mother said when Bryn finished recounting the disaster.

“It’s too far,” Bryn protested. “Vivian’s house is over an hour from here without traffic—”

“You’re going to her house?” Her mother’s eyes widened. “I figured it was a studio—”

“Mom, focus.”

“Yep, sorry.”

“Maybe I can get a pet-sitting job closer to—”

“Honey.” She stood and put her hand on Bryn’s shoulder. “Should you add the complication of one of your side gigs to something this important?”

Bryn closed her eyes to fight the crushing tide of anxiety that was looming over her. It took every drop of energy to keep from screaming about the universe hating her. To ask what she’d done to deserve this kind of luck.

“You’ve worked so hard for this. I would hate to see it jeopardized by distractions,” her mother continued, voice gentle. “Stay with us. I never got around to dropping your old clothes at Goodwill.”

Bryn groaned and wrapped her arms around her mother’s waist. It made the most sense to stay with her parents, but that didn’t make her any less nauseated. Any less horrified at the prospect of showing up to Vivian’s house in decade-old leggings and UGGs.

Yep, this was exactly Bryn’s luck. Nothing good ever arrived without complications.