Chapter 7
DEBBIE
The cameras will be here in fifteen minutes.
I take one last glance at my garden to make sure it looks perfect.
I know roses are very popular, like the ones in Jo Dolan’s garden down the road, but I have a beautiful mix of vivid pink, red, and violet flowers.
When the journalist asked me what type of flowers they were, I said they were windflowers because that’s what they look like, but they’re not really.
If I told them what the flowers really were, I wouldn’t be in the magazine. Even Cooper doesn’t know.
The garden looks perfect, so I take another look down at my dress, smoothing out any creases. The red splotches do look a lot like bloodstains, but I don’t know if it’s worth changing. I’m not even certain that they’ll photograph me at all, and if they do, it may just be a headshot.
I glance down at my watch—still ten more minutes.
Time seems to be moving in slow motion. It suddenly occurs to me that they’ll want coffee, so I get a pot brewing using the state-of-the-art coffee machine we received as a housewarming gift, which Cooper immediately deemed “too complicated.” He now gets his coffee at work.
But it’s hardly nuclear physics (which is actually nowhere near as difficult as my advanced database systems class in college).
I pour the coffee grounds into the machine and press a button that makes the machine spring to life. There. The coffee is now forthcoming.
I am too restless to sit in the kitchen, so instead, I head to the front door.
I peek out the window to see if they might have arrived early and are waiting until ten just to be polite.
But there are no unfamiliar cars parked in front of my house.
I do, however, spy Bev Petrie, who lives right across from me, on her hands and knees in the dirt, and before I can stop myself, I’m rushing out my front door.
“Bev!” I call out. “Bev, are you okay?”
Bev is eighty-seven years old and lives all alone in the small one-story house a stone’s throw away from mine.
Her brain is sharp as a tack, but she’s frail enough that I worry one big gust of wind could blow her away.
I’ve taken to rushing over to her house to see if there’s anything she needs help with—usually taking out her garbage and hauling it to the curb, picking up a giant bag of kibble for her dog that’s as old as she is (in dog years), and of course, lawn-related tasks.
I worry that a bad tumble could send her to the hospital with a broken hip, and I hope that’s not in the cards for today.
“Bev!” I say again when I get closer, because her hearing isn’t what it used to be. “What’s going on? Did you fall?”
Bev raises her slightly bleary blue eyes, and a smile creases her face. She doesn’t appear to be seriously injured and is, in fact, gardening. “Debbie! Good morning!”
I hold out a hand to help her back to her feet—I’m concerned it might not have been possible without my help. I make a note to myself to check on her more frequently.
“I was just trying to pull a few weeds.” She gives her garden a glowering look. “Damn crabgrass is everywhere. Jo Dolan was commenting that I’ve got more weeds than flowers.”
“Bev, I can take care of your weeds for you this weekend,” I tell her.
Her eyes brighten. “You can?”
“Sure. It’s easy.”
People often write to Dear Debbie to ask for help killing weeds without harming their other plants. I usually recommend a solution of vinegar, salt, and soap. However, my absolute favorite way to kill weeds is to take a pot of boiling water and scald the little devils.
Bev looks me up and down. “Don’t you look lovely this morning! Is your photo shoot today?”
I nod. “It is. I better get back to the house.”
It’s just about ten, and although it’s clear the photographer has not arrived, it wouldn’t look right if I weren’t even home when they came.
“Good luck, dear,” Bev says. “Jo is going to be so jealous! I can’t wait to see her face!”
I shrug and act like I couldn’t care less, but I’d be lying if I said that it won’t give me a little bit of joy to stick it to my neighbor from down the block who’s always putting me down. Jo thinks she has the best lawn on the block, and she’ll tell anyone who will listen.
I bid Bev goodbye and walk back across the street to my own house.
It’s now several minutes after ten, and there’s still no sign of the people from the magazine.
They must be running late. Nobody is on time for anything in the real world.
The only thing you must be on time for is the school bus, because that waits for nobody.
As I walk into the kitchen, the coffee machine lets out a loud hiss, and a slow and steady stream of brown liquid starts to drip into the pot. Perfect. Now I have coffee. I’m all set for when they show up.
I check my watch again. I do have a phone number for the magazine, but I hate to be that person. Your photographer is fifteen minutes late. Where are you? I’m sure they’ll be here eventually. Home Gardening wouldn’t just ghost me.
Would they?
I sit at the kitchen table, tapping my foot as I listen to the coffee slowly dripping into the coffeepot.
Every few minutes, I check my watch, and every few minutes, it’s a few minutes later, but the photographer still isn’t here.
I even check my email to confirm that this was the day and time we had agreed on.
At ten twenty-five, I crack. I check the phone number, which is in an email from Nita Geisler, the journalist who contacted me about the photos. She came to my house and gushed about the beautiful garden, and we set up this photo shoot for today. September 26 at ten in the morning.
I punch the number into my phone with slightly trembling fingers.
I have spent the last week anticipating this photo shoot, and somehow I must have screwed something up.
After all, this has to be my fault. Maybe I didn’t confirm the day and time like I was supposed to?
A legit magazine wouldn’t just not show up this way.
“Home Gardening,” a peppy female voice chirps on the other end of the line.
Great. I was hoping the number was a private line for Nita, but apparently I have to deal with a gatekeeper. “Um, hi,” I say. “This is Debra Mullen. I’m trying to reach Nita Geisler.”
“Sure! And what is this regarding?”
“Well…” I toy with a lock of my hair, but then I end up tugging it so hard that my scalp hurts. “She was supposed to come here this morning with the photographer at ten, but she’s not here.”
“Hmm.” Keys tap on the other end of the line. “I don’t see any appointments in Nita’s schedule for today.”
“Well, she emailed me that we were meeting this morning.” I pause. “I have the email…”
“That is so strange!” the receptionist says again, like she’s been tasked to solve a particularly difficult mystery. “Let me investigate! Hold please!”
The hold music is a Taylor Swift song. I generally like Taylor Swift music, but I am not in the mood right now. Also, the longer I sit here, twiddling my thumbs, the more I’m starting to get the implicit message that I’m the problem, it’s me.
Just when I am about to hang up, the girl’s voice pipes up, “Mrs. Miller?”
“Mullen,” I correct her.
“Mrs. Muller,” she repeats, making an admirable attempt to get it correct on her second try. “I have Nita Geisler on the other line. Can you please hold?”
I suppress an eye roll worthy of Lexi, not understanding why she couldn’t just transfer me directly to Nita, given that I was already on hold. I feel like I’m trying to reach the president or something. Nita is just a journalist at a dinky gardening magazine. “Sure.”
I have to listen to another fifteen seconds of hold music before Nita’s throaty voice comes on the other end of the line. “Hello?” she says.
“Hi!” I exclaim, pathetically grateful that I’m talking to a human instead of listening to music. “This is Debbie… Debra Mullen? We… I mean, I thought the camera crew was coming here this morning. To photograph my garden, you know? That’s what it said in the email. Did I… Did I get the date wrong?”
“Oh, Debbie,” Nita sighs. “I am so sorry. I thought my assistant called you to cancel, but apparently not.”
Fantastic. I have been waiting here all morning in my bloodstained dress for nothing. Well, at least I can decide on something less gory to wear before the actual photo shoot. Now that I know this isn’t going to happen, I’m a tiny bit relieved. “So should we reschedule?”
“Actually,” Nita says, “we decided to go in another direction.”
The relief I felt a second ago vanishes, replaced with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Another direction?”
“Well,” she says, “when we were leaving your house, we ran into your neighbor, Josephine Dolan. We saw her rose garden, and roses are just so classic. I thought it would be a nice throwback look for the photo spread.”
My jaw drops. I am absolutely stunned. Jo stole my photo shoot?
“I really thought my assistant told you,” Nita says. “I’m so sorry. I hope you didn’t go to too much trouble.”
“No,” I say numbly. “Not at all. But… I mean, you can’t photograph both of our gardens? It’s just one or the other?”
She laughs. “We can’t very well do two gardens on the same block. That would be ridiculous.”
Yes, of course.
“Again, I’m so sorry about this, Debbie,” she says.
“As an apology, we would be happy to sign you up for three months of a free subscription to Home Gardening. We would need your credit card, of course, but you could cancel it anytime after the free trial. Although most people love their subscription and continue it for years.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t want a magazine arriving at my house with a big spread showing Jo’s garden.
“So,” Nita says, “can I transfer you back to my receptionist so she can take your information?”
“Sure,” I manage.
But then the second Taylor Swift starts up again, I hang up the phone.
I sit there at the kitchen table, staring at the now full coffeepot.
I’ll have to pour it down the sink. Jo and I have had a healthy rivalry over our gardens for years, but I never thought she’d stoop so low.
I want to believe there’s an explanation that doesn’t involve her stealing my magazine spread right out from under my nose.
The aroma of brewed coffee fills the room, but the only thing that might make me feel better right now isn’t coffee. I need a stiff drink.
I’m not much of a drinker, and neither is Cooper, but I still have a bottle of expensive pinot grigio that my neighbor Rochelle gave me for Christmas last year, knowing that whatever I gave her wouldn’t be as nice. I haven’t managed to crack it open yet, but this seems like a good opportunity.
We keep the bottle of wine in the cabinet over the refrigerator.
I have to stand on my tippy-toes to nudge it open, and I grasp the bottle in my right hand.
I’m not a huge fan of wine, and I recognize that chugging wine in the middle of the morning is a slippery slope, but I try not to think about it.
It will numb the pain of the phone conversation I just had.
The first thing I notice about the bottle of wine is that the cork has been dislodged. That’s not so strange though. Maybe Cooper had a glass at some point. Although when I hold it up, the bottle looks completely full. Did someone open the bottle, then fail to drink anything?
I pop out the cork and don’t even bother with a glass. I swig the wine straight from the bottle, not taking time to swish it around my mouth and savor the fruity undertones or whatever. I just want the pleasant numbing buzz.
Except when I take a swallow of the wine, I get a big surprise. There are no fruity undertones or pleasant numbing buzz. There’s nothing.
It tastes like water.
I stare at the bottle in confusion. Did I somehow read the label wrong, and it’s actually sparkling water? But this doesn’t taste like sparkling water. It tastes like something out of the tap.
I shift over to the sink and tip the mouth of the bottle until the contents pour out. I would have expected a pale straw-colored liquid to flow into my sink, but instead, the contents of the bottle are mostly clear. Someone drank my wine, then replaced it with water so I wouldn’t know.
Who would’ve done something like that?
With the jolt of one hundred percent certainty, I know who it must have been. Zane. Lexi’s boyfriend.
I already knew that kid was bad news, and now that little creep is actually drinking our alcohol on top of everything else.
Of course, if I say anything to Lexi, she’ll deny it.
She thinks her boyfriend walks on water.
All I can do is make sure there’s no other alcohol in the house for him to steal.
I had been anticipating the pleasant buzz of being slightly drunk. But now that possibility is off the table, and I can’t stop fuming about what just happened to me. My garden was supposed to be in a magazine spread. It was all booked, and somehow, my neighbor stole it from me.
Well, she’s not going to get away with it. I’m going over there right now.