Chapter Two
As she walked back to the shed to retrieve the keyring, the slam of a vehicle door caught Lynette’s attention. Someone was in her driveway. She hoped it was Relic, arriving early to beat the heat. The keys and locked box would have to wait. She veered to the left and had nearly reached the back of their four-stall garage when she recognized voices. Relic had come early, and he wasn’t alone.
“Annie!” Lynette hollered.
She broke into a jog, arms extended, as she rushed to the driveway and her friend. But fifteen months of social distancing had changed things, and she skidded to a halt near the front of a beat-up old pickup.
Annie was struggling to pull her arms free of a gray sweatshirt. A wide grin replaced her frown when she spied Lynette at the edge of the driveway, frozen in her awkward position. “You look like you could use a hug, but you also might still be battling a little pandemic-inspired social anxiety, my friend,” Annie said, laughing. “I’m sorry, but it isn’t a good look on you. Why are you wearing a mask outside?”
Lynette had forgotten about the mask. She yanked it off and shoved it into a pocket. Wearing one didn’t feel as strange as it had at first, earlier in the pandemic. She let her arms fall to her sides. “I’m cleaning out a filthy old shed, and the dust was hurting my lungs,” she explained. “It’s so good to see you! Hey, Relic. Thanks for coming over to give me a hand, and thanks for bringing my amazing friend along for the ride.”
“She insisted,” the young man said with a little smirk.
Annie tossed the sweatshirt through the open passenger window. “Maybe you don’t need a hug, but I sure do. It feels like a lifetime since I last saw you in person. Do you mind?”
It was all the encouragement Lynette needed. Her arms shot back up and she met Annie halfway, catching the shorter woman in a bear hug. In her younger years, she’d have scooped Annie up and spun her in circles, but she settled for a tight squeeze and a moment of rocking to and fro.
Aside from the occasional hug from her mother, Lynette struggled to remember the last time she’d touched another person. Had it been when she’d said her goodbyes to Annie and her other three besties in the Phoenix airport? Their last girls’ trip was nearly eighteen months ago, just before the world tilted and sent them all scuttling behind closed doors.
“I’ve missed you,” Annie was saying, her face hidden within Lynette’s overabundance of tight silver curls. “Zoom calls can’t replace face to face. When Relic told me he was heading over here to give you a hand, he couldn’t keep me out of his passenger seat.”
The two women separated, though Annie kept one hand on Lynette’s shoulder, as if reluctant to end the contact. Relic looked between the two of them, rolling his eyes over their exuberance at seeing each other again.
“Mom, remember, we have to make this quick,” he said, a small smile tugging at his mouth. “You aren’t the only one excited for a little time with friends. I’m meeting up with the guys out at the lake in a while.”
Annie checked her watch. “Oh, right. And I promised Ava I’d watch Nora so she could go on a run before it gets too hot outside.”
“Do you still have a full house?” Lynette asked, remembering that all three of her friend’s kids, plus a son-in-law and a newborn, had lived with Annie and her husband throughout much of the pandemic. It must have been crowded. Annie’s arrangement was in stark contrast to that of her and Donna, ambling around inside their big old house for months on end.
“Our nest isn’t empty yet, but my babies are spreading their wings again.”
This time Relic didn’t bother to suppress a groan. “We’re hardly babies, Mom. Other than Nora, that is.”
“Sorry, Relic, but Donna still calls me her baby, so be prepared to hear that term from your mother for the rest of your life.”
Relic shrugged, then gazed around the yard. “Where is Donna? I want to remind her she promised me a batch of her famous chocolate chip cookies when I go back to college this fall.”
Another pickup truck, a much newer and fancier one that she didn’t recognize, drove leisurely by, catching Lynette’s eye. She couldn’t make out the driver’s face through shadowed glass, but she gave a neighborly wave before turning her attention back to Annie’s son.
“Don’t worry, Relic. If there’s one thing Donna never forgets, it’s a promise to a cute young man. You’ll get your cookies. Now, I know you said you’re in a hurry, so let me show you where I stacked those pine branches.”
In what seemed like no time at all, Lynette and Annie once again stood in the driveway while Relic secured a strap over the mound of cuttings in his truck bed.
“Many hands make light work,” Lynette said, pulling off her gardening gloves. “Thanks again, you two. Hey, Annie, are you getting excited yet?”
“For our trip to Whispering Pines next week? So excited! I love my family dearly, but I think we’d all agree that we’ve had more than enough months of togetherness. I’m ready for some girl time. How about you?”
Lynette started to shove her gloves into a pocket, but thought better of it given the amount of sticky tree sap on them. She tossed them on the grass along the drive. “More than ready. We’re lucky Renee already had us on her books for the first two weeks in August. When I checked in with her last week, she barely had time to talk. Her repeat customers are returning to Whispering Pines in droves, now that many are more comfortable with getting out in the world again.”
Annie handed Lynette the spare set of gloves she’d borrowed and wiped a sweaty strand of hair from her forehead. “It isn’t luck. You kept the faith that the Kaleidoscope Girls could stay on track to never miss an annual girls’ trip. You asked Renee to make those reservations. But I know lots has changed since you asked her to do that last summer. You’ve sold your company, bought and renovated this place, and you haven’t worked over the past year. Are you still sure you want to have Renee hold the whole place for us? That’ll be expensive, regardless of how good of a deal she offered. She still has bills to pay.”
Lynette shook her head. Annie was right that she’d experienced plenty of change over the last year, including a surprise hit to her financial situation. She hoped that would turn around. No one needed to know that the chance she’d taken regarding the sale of the company wasn’t panning out exactly how she’d planned. She still had money in the bank, but was no longer convinced she could survive the financial demands of her next forty years without working. Besides, fifty was too young for her to retire completely. The year-long break had been nice in many ways, but she missed the stimulation she used to get out of working.
“I was worried that the only way Renee could relax during our visit was if she didn’t have other guests to attend to while we were there. She knows us well enough now that I don’t think she’ll feel like she has to play host the whole time. I wanted her to feel like she’s getting a bit of a vacation, too. But she actually asked me if I’d mind if she rented out the cabins we won’t need. I think she needs the money. She’ll have her daughter Julie take care of running the resort while we’re there.”
“That’s good news.”
“I think so, too. I do have one request, though,” Lynette said. “Any chance I could catch a ride with you out to the resort? I didn’t drive during my years in New York, and while I’m comfortable cruising around Ruby Shores, highway driving isn’t my favorite thing.”
Annie laughed. “Even as a kid, driving wasn’t one of your top skills. Wasn’t the truck you wrecked during our last month of high school similar to Relic’s?”
“Don’t remind me,” Lynette groaned. “Yes, it was something like this one. I wonder if Storm was ever able to fix it.”
“Doubtful,” Annie said. “I still get chills when I close my eyes and see that crushed pickup cab from that night. You’re lucky you survived.”
“I’m lucky I survived both the crash and the scene I heard Storm’s mother threw afterward,” Lynette said.
Despite the day’s rising temperature, she couldn’t suppress a shiver. Donna had interceded on her daughter’s behalf with Storm’s mother. Lynette never asked her mother what they’d discussed, but before the cut on Lynette’s face had even healed, the mother-daughter duo had packed up and left town. She’d always suspected Donna was running from something again, but her own guilt over wrecking Storm’s truck prevented her from asking too many questions.
Relic jumped down from the box of his truck, pulling Lynette’s attention back to her driveway. “So, you’re the one I have to thank for my overprotective mother, huh? I can’t leave the house without her hollering at me to be careful. You really rolled a pickup like mine?”
“I really did,” Lynette said. Her hand automatically came up to touch the faint scar on her cheek that would always remind her of that awful night so long ago and the bleak days that followed. Her girlfriends only knew half of what had unfolded back then, and that was how she planned to keep it. “But I suspect your mom would say that anyhow. That’s what mothers do.”
He grinned. “You’re probably right. Now, I hate to rush you two through your trip down memory lane, but I gotta bounce. Ready, Mom?”
“Wait!” Lynette unbuttoned the one pocket she hadn’t been pulling things out of throughout her morning. She fished out the cash she’d taken from her purse earlier and thrust the bills into Relic’s hand. “I hope that’s sufficient.”
He gave the money a quick glance, his eyes rounding with surprise. “I can’t take this much. It took, like, fifteen minutes, and you two helped.”
Lynette shook her head. “That may be true, but you’ll still need to take all this to the branch disposal area across town.” Then she remembered the heavy statue she’d discovered in the shed earlier. She’d forgotten to ask Relic to help her move it, but it really would be in her way.
“What?” Annie said, eyes narrowing. “I can see there’s something on your mind.”
Lynette shrugged. “There was just another quick thing I was going to ask Relic to help me with, but I forgot, and now you’re both in a hurry, so forget it.”
Relic looked at the money once more, shoved it in his pocket, then settled his hands on his hips. “It isn’t going to kill Ava to wait a few more minutes for her free babysitter. And my friends won’t miss me for a while, I’m sure. What do you need done?”
“But you had plans,” Lynette countered, though she was impressed that the twenty-year-old saw the value in an even exchange.
“Work comes first.”
Knowing they were wasting time, Lynette bowed her head and motioned toward her garden shed. “Follow me.”
Several minutes and plenty of grunts later, the statue stood squarely in the center of Donna’s rose bushes. Hot sunshine once again beat down on the girl’s copper wreath, now burnished with that blue-green patina. She looked like she belonged there, and once Lynette got the garden shed cleaned out, she vowed to get the water flowing in the pool at the statue’s feet.
Relic started his truck and Lynette slammed Annie’s passenger-side door before tapping on the roof with her right hand. She might have burned her fingers on the hot metal if not for the gloves she’d pulled back on. “I couldn’t have done that without you,” she said. Maybe she should give Relic more than the initial fifty. That statue had turned out to be ridiculously heavy.
Annie, ever perceptive, gave her a curt shake of her head. “You gave him plenty. What is it you’re always telling us?”
Lynette snorted. This is what she’d missed the most. Time with someone who knew her well and could accurately guess her thoughts. “Just say ‘thank you.’ ”
“Exactly,” Annie said, glancing between Relic and Lynette. “You wouldn’t have had to pay him a dime. Ruby Shores is a place where neighbors help neighbors. We don’t have much over New York City, but we have that.”
Lynette stepped back from the truck so they could leave. She’d held them up long enough. “Annie, you live ten minutes from here. I wouldn’t exactly consider us neighbors.”
“You know what I mean.”
She did, and it was one of the many things that had drawn her and her mother back to this small town.
She noticed Relic struggling to see behind him as he backed out of her driveway. His truck wouldn’t have backup cameras, being an older model, and her pile of trimmings likely blocked any line of vision out of his rearview mirror.
“Hold up,” she warned.
As she walked to the end of her driveway, the same pickup she’d noticed earlier passed her place again. It was heading in the opposite direction and still moving at a slow pace. Once the truck had passed, Lynette gave Relic the all-clear, and she was soon alone again.
If this were New York City, her gut might have warned her it was strange for the same truck to drive slowly past her place twice in such a brief window of time. But this was Ruby Shores. It was probably someone who lived down the street. She hadn’t met many of her actual neighbors yet, despite being here for almost a year. But old habits die hard, and maybe that was why she still felt a brief twinge of apprehension.
“You’re being ridiculous,” she whispered, wishing she could take the big city out of the small-town girl. A trickle of sweat rolled down her back.
She retrieved the keys from the shed and headed back to the box she’d regretfully set aside earlier. After ten minutes with the large ring of keys, she had to concede that none of them would unlock the dusty container. These keys were all too big.
It was probably time to change into something cooler and get back to her main project of cleaning out the shed.
Annie’s reminder that their upcoming stay at the Whispering Pines resort was only a week away gave her a new goal. She’d not only empty the shed before their annual girls’ trip, she’d get it fixed up, too. That way she could show the other Kaleidoscope Girls real pictures of her miniscule sanctuary that currently only existed in her mind.
If she could build, then sell, a multi-million-dollar company, she could handle renovating her little she-shed.
That meant the mystery box would have to wait until tonight. She was excited to find out what was inside. Whatever it was, someone had deemed it important enough to lock up, and maybe even hide inside a seldom used garden shed.