Chapter Sixteen James
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
James
Madison seems surprised when I stop at the gas station, fill up the truck, and come back out from paying with a sleeve of powdered sugar donuts.
Her eyes light up when I hand them to her, and she dives into them as soon as we hit the road (her seatbelt on).
We drive in silence for a while, the only sound coming from the road and the crinkling donut package.
She makes all these little noises while she eats that feel so cliché for a chef, making me laugh.
It gets her attention and, with a mouth lightly dusted with sugar, she looks down at her last mini donut and is so comically torn before tipping it in my direction, offering it to me.
I know she doesn’t want to share that donut, I can see it in her greedy brown eyes, so I make a big show of contemplating taking it.
Finally, I shake my head and tell her I’m not hungry.
She’s relieved and tosses the donut into her mouth as fast as she can before I can reconsider.
We roll into town and park out front of the Market.
“Harriet?” I call out after we enter because I don’t see her, but she’s always here on restock days.
“Harrrrietttt!” Madison trills in a high-pitched tone. “We know you’re in here! Show yourself!”
“Quit hollering. I’m over here,” she says from behind a window display where she’s seemingly materialized. Madison and I both startle.
“Holy shit, Harriet. Where did you come from?” Madison is clutching her chest.
Harriet, who is holding binoculars (I knew I had lent mine to someone) aimed out the window, turns her frown to Madison. “Watch your language.”
“Oh, damn. Sorry.” She winces, realizing she cursed again. “Shit.” Another wince. “Dammit!” She slaps her hand over her mouth and then spins quickly and plants her face directly into my chest.
“Young lady!” Harriet reprimands.
I’m stunned at the feel of her so easily pressing into my chest, but I rally quickly and wrap my hand around the back of her head, shielding her from Harriet.
“Just give her a second. Her filter fell off and she’s gotta adjust it back into place.
” I feel Madison’s laugh, followed by her big brown eyes looking up at me, chin resting on my chest. I want to kiss her forehead. Something I might never be able to do.
As far back as I can remember, Harriet and Madison have been oil and water. Where one is draped in shades of beige and gray, the other is wearing a baggy tie-dye tee with a daisy flower illustration over each boob.
Madison clears her throat and peels away to face Harriet again. “What are you doing back there?”
“Nothing.” Using the little table in her shop window for support, Harriet stands. She smooths her hands down the front of her skirt, giving us a look like we were the ones doing something suspicious.
I’d let it go and get back to work, but Madison could never. “Bullshhhh—crap.” She closes the space between herself and Harriet. “It’s beyond clear that you’re up to no good.”
Harriet’s nose lifts into the air. “The Lord is nothing but good, and I am always praising him, therefore I can’t be up to anything besides goodness.”
“It’s too early for riddles, Harriet. Let me see the binoculars.”
“Sure.” She hands them over gracefully and steps aside. “I love to bird watch. It’s soul-filling. You should try it, Madison. I think your soul could use some tending.”
“Uh-huh, step aside.” Madison squats where Harriet was just sitting, aims the binoculars in the same direction.
A moment later, a slow smile curls her mouth.
“Why, Harriet—” She lowers the binoculars.
“The bird you were watching didn’t happen to be sitting on the front porch of the inn where Mabel is rocking in her chair, would it? ”
“As a matter of fact, it was.” She goes behind the counter and starts tidying an invisible mess.
Madison follows and drapes herself lazily over the counter. “Oh come on, Harriet! Admit it. You want to be friends with Mabel.”
“Bite your tongue. I could never be friends with that brash woman.”
“You miss her when you two go too long without squabbling. In a twisted hate-to-love way, Mabel is your friend.” Only Madison would have the guts to say all of this to Harriet.
Even Emily wouldn’t chance it. She finds the line no one will cross and then steamrolls over it.
“Or! Maybe you want to be even more than friends with Mabel.”
“Okay, now that is quite enough. James, please unload the stock and go about your day so you can take this one with you.”
“Actually, Harriet, I think she’s right,” I say, earning an appraising look from Madison over her shoulder that has heat curling around my spine.
She’s delighted I’m backing her up. We’re on the same side finally, and it feels right.
Not to mention, this might be the answer to my worries about Mabel.
This potential friendship has been right in front of my nose the whole time and I never saw it.
“If you and Mabel would stop picking at each other over every damn thing, I bet you’d have a lot in common. ”
Madison straightens up and faces me with a grin. “They could be best friends and start a book club.”
“Get matching tramp stamp tattoos.”
“Tramp what?” Harriet asks but we’re too locked into each other to pay her attention now.
Madison’s eyes sparkle. “Tattoos of each other’s names.”
“And they could go to a Price Is Right taping together.”
She covers her heart. “And they’d make bedazzled T-shirts that say I’M WITH TROUBLE, so they’d definitely get selected and then win a car.”
“Which they decide to share.”
Harriet waves this time to get our attention. “What’s happening here, anyway? I thought you were going to be the chef of James’s new restaurant—why are you making deliveries?”
Madison leans on the counter again, and I already miss her attention. “The sun came up and I thought, I bet Harriet has been dying to see me! So I hopped right in James’s truck and here I am. Just for you.” Madison bats her eyes at a stoic Harriet.
“I’d find it more believable if you said you’d already been demoted to a hired hand,” she mumbles, but it’s loud enough for Madison to hear.
Something about those words has me taking a step closer to the counter.
I must look ready to argue because Madison’s hand clutches my wrist—chipped pink and yellow nails holding me back.
“No chance,” she says to Harriet. “And I’ll have a table waiting just for you at our opening. Can’t wait to wow you.”
Harriet lifts a mocking brow. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Madison smiles, letting me know she’s fine, before I unload Harriet’s stuff. She grabs some locally made boiled peanuts for the road.
Unfortunately, things don’t improve like I hope at subsequent stops either. Charlie Bristol tells Madison how happy he is to see her back in town, but then laughs when she tells him the reason for her return.
“You?” he says like she’s in on the joke. “The same girl who sold severely underbaked cookies in the senior bake sale and gave us all food poisoning?”
“I was seventeen!”
He squints. “But wasn’t there another incident while you were teaching over at the elementary school?”
“I don’t think so,” Madison mumbles, then turns sharply to me. “Anything else in the truck I can grab?”
Charlie claps. “I remember! You nearly burned the damn school down. Left something in the oven, right? What was it?”
Through her teeth, Madison says, “Banana bread. For the teachers’ luncheon.”
Charlie cackles. “That’s right! School evacuated and the fire department came and all the kids had to go home early. I think every elementary school parent in Rome hated you that day because they all had to call out of work early.”
“Yeah, well, the teachers loved me at least,” she says, but it lacks her usual fire.
We have two more nearly identical stops with people all giving Madison their two cents, and she doesn’t let me intervene either time.
Even when one of the guys says he’s glad Madison is back because he always had a good time with her.
I wanted to shove the suggestive wink he gave her down his throat.
Somehow, it seems I’m more bothered by everyone’s comments than Madison is. She laughs off every single rude statement and leaves with a different snack. She’s on her fifth one: a little bowl of green beans from the BBQ joint we just left.
She’s over there singing with her hand out the window and hair tangling around her face as we drive to the last stop, and when we pull into the driveway of the house, I finally give in to the thought that’s been spinning in my head. “Are you not bothered?”
Her short hair sways against her jaw as she turns to me. “About what?”
I let out a mirthless laugh. “About everything those shitheads have said to you all day. Bringing up all that negative stuff from your past?”
She shrugs. “Didn’t bother me.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You swear on all of your future powdered sugar donuts?”
“James.” Her eyes lock with mine, all jokes gone.
Serious Madison has entered the room. “It didn’t bother me because .
. . it was all true. But not in a depressing way.
” She laughs once. “How do I explain it? I’m .
. . home. I thought I was going to thrive in New York because no one would know me there.
No one would know that I was Madison Walker, the girl whose parents died when she was eight.
And it’s true, I got to be whoever I wanted to be in the city.
But all I found was my heart doesn’t like being surrounded by strangers.