Chapter Nine
Tasha Keller’s last name was unfortunate. It rhymed with Smeller, which was an easy nickname to stick to a girl who, when she got excited or happy or scared, would ask anyone near her, Can you smell that?, as if she thought emotions had a scent.
They did, in fact, have a scent, each distinct. Confusion smelled like hot pavement after a July storm. Surprise, tart cherries. But the Westers were the only ones in Hen Town allowed to be weird, and by the time Tasha caught on to this and stopped telling people, it was too late.
Smeller had stuck.
“Is that Tug Wester? It is!” Tasha Keller’s mother braked hard.
Tasha turned in her seat and saw a man and a little girl walking down the sidewalk.
They were both blond and well dressed, each holding ice cream that was most certainly from Mother Hen’s Frozen Tea, because the waffle cones had little C-shaped handles that made them look like teacups.
Tasha had only been to Mother Hen’s once, but she would always remember that day.
The ice cream had tasted like strawberry tea and honey, and her mother had been in one of her hyper moods.
Tasha had wanted to tell the woman with long salt-and-pepper hair behind the counter that it was okay, that her mother was just like this.
But the woman probably already knew. Everyone knew what Pam Keller was like.
She wasn’t a bad person, just completely tone deaf to her own behavior and how she was perceived.
To really know her, you had to be patient with her, which few people were.
“I heard his wife died. Let’s say hello,” Pam said, making a sudden U-turn to park on the opposite side of the street, causing the car behind them to blare its horn. The man and the little girl stopped and turned at the sound.
Tasha’s mother had always had a wild fascination with the Westers.
She adored the fact that her ex-husband had a connection to them.
His aunt Jani had been part of Willamena Wester’s inner circle in high school.
Pam had tried to get him to tell her everything he knew about the Westers, thinking he had some inside intel, but he didn’t.
He’d never even met his aunt Jani, who had moved away years ago.
But Pam would remark every time they passed the Wester House, We’re practically related!
Even Tasha knew they weren’t. Still, she was excited as she got out of the car with her mother.
They almost never got out to walk around.
They always drove. In fact, driving through this neighborhood, the oldest in town, was something Pam did nearly every day now, daydreaming about living in the big houses.
This neighborhood even felt different. There was a curious element of the unseen, like if money could haunt you, it would haunt you here, where the air was as soft and cottony as a veil.
“Tug?” Pam said as they approached. She smoothed her bangs down so that they touched her eyelashes, a stim when she was nervous.
“I’m sure you don’t remember me. Pam Honeycutt?
Pam Keller now, but I’m divorced. I married Richard Keller.
His aunt was like a sister to your mother, back in the day. We’re practically related!”
The handsome man smiled, a smile that reached his eyes. “I do remember you, Pam. It’s nice to see you again.”
“I heard about your wife,” Pam said. “Someone on our class page mentioned it. Are you just visiting? You haven’t been back since high school.”
“I’ve actually moved back in with my mother.”
“How exciting for you!” Tasha winced, sure this wasn’t the most appropriate response.
But she knew her mother was referring to living in this neighborhood, not the loss that brought him back.
“Is this your daughter?” She reached over to put an arm around Tasha, pulling her to her side as if for reassurance. “This is mine.”
“Yes. This is Bailey.”
Tasha pointed to the cone Bailey was holding. “I like that ice cream place.”
Bailey immediately extended the cone to Tasha.
Tasha hesitated. The people around her usually weren’t big on sharing.
She finally leaned in and took a small bite.
It was strawberry tea and honey, just like Tasha had that one time, and the absolute incandescence of liking the same thing as this new girl suddenly lit her up inside.
“No one will mistake her for anything other than a Wester, that’s for sure. You’re all so beautiful. I had a little crush on you in high school.” Pam laughed and patted her bangs again. “Is that bad to say?”
“Of course not, Pam.”
“If you ever need anything, just let me know. I’m not currently working.
” It was the currently that caught Tasha’s attention.
She’d never known her mother to have a job outside the home.
She’d never known her mother to look for a job, either, even after the divorce and Tasha’s father moved away.
“Do you need help around the Wester House? You could hire me.”
“You know my mother never lets anyone inside,” he said gently.
Bailey pointed down the street and said to Tasha, “That’s my house, but I can’t have anyone over to play.” Then she indicated the green house next to it. “I like that one more.”
Pam said, “She’s welcome at my house anytime.”
“I’m going to keep an eye on her for a while, Pam. It’s a tough transition.”
“Oh, I understand. I don’t know what I would have done without Tasha after the divorce. She’s my best friend.”
Tug hesitated. “I meant it’s a tough transition for her.”
“We could meet in the center park, then. Give the girls a play date? Tomorrow? Please don’t say no.”
Tug nodded. “All right.”
“Good! Good. See you then.”
Tasha couldn’t believe she was actually going to the park to play tomorrow instead of driving around all day or, worse, staying in the dark house watching cartoons on mute because her mother was in one of her blue moods.
They watched in silence as Tug and Bailey walked up the steps to the Wester House. These people, she suddenly understood, were here to change their lives.
She took a big, deep breath through her nose.
“What do you smell?” Pam asked.
Instead of saying nothing this time, Tasha said, “It’s something sweet. Like a bakery.”
“That, my darling,” Pam said, “is what happiness smells like.”
Every weekday for the next month, Tasha and her mother met the Westers downtown.
Tug and Pam sat on a bench and chatted, and the girls played games Bailey made up.
Tasha didn’t mind that she always had to be the invisible husband to Bailey’s wife in Wedding Bride.
Or that she was the one who always fell into the canyon while Bailey managed to survive in Cliffhanger.
But at least she got to be the girl chased by Bailey into the pink castle and saved by the old king in Lost Girl.
Blind devotion was the only thing she thought she could offer their friendship.
Until she became aware of just how desperate Bailey was for information about Willamena Wester.
Every time someone lingered to talk to Tug and Pam, Bailey would immediately stop playing and hide behind the park chicken sculptures to listen.
She was always disappointed when Willamena’s name didn’t come up.
Apparently, at home, Bailey’s grandmother was avoiding her, and Bailey didn’t like it.
Tasha wasn’t sure why. Most people in town were glad if Willamena ignored them.
But if Bailey wanted stories, that was what Tasha would give her.
Tasha lived with a woman who loved anything to do with the Westers, after all, so there were many stories to tell.
Like how Willamena was sometimes called the Witch of Wester House, just like her grandmother before her.
Some people thought she was capable of curses, because an engagement of someone Willamena once knew mysteriously dissolved after that person betrayed her trust. Others believed she was running an illegal operation of an unknown nature in her house.
This was based solely on the story from a frightened furnace repairman who replaced the old basement furnace a few years ago, the only person outside of family who had been allowed entrance since the 1970s.
Immediately afterward, he sold his business and left town.
No one knew what happened down there in the basement, but it had spooked him so much that he was now living somewhere in South America, a hot, remote place chosen solely so he wouldn’t have to set eyes on another heating unit again.
Bailey ate the tales up, so Tasha started asking her mother at night for more.
It made Pam happy to talk about them, and happy wasn’t something Pam often was.
Tasha loved her mother more than anyone in the world, but she wished she knew what to do to fix her.
There were times she thought she would give up her own happiness if it meant ensuring her mother’s.
But now that the Westers were in their lives, she would never have to.
Bailey’s dad even encouraged Pam to stop dragging her feet and get Tasha enrolled in kindergarten.
Pam’s excuse was that she was so upset about Tasha leaving her alone all day that she wanted to homeschool her.
So Tug asked around and found that Barry Gilford, whom he and Pam had known in school, needed a receptionist. No more excuses.
Just like that, Tasha was enrolled in school, and Pam was practicing her receptionist voice at home by pretending to answer the phone, saying, Barry Gilford Insurance Agency, Pam speaking.
It was a heady time for Tasha. There was so much new happening, and with each new experience came its own scent. There was anticipation, which smelled like wintergreen. And hope, the rubbery, powder-covered scent of a balloon.
But in a matter of weeks, there would also be disappointment.
Which, interestingly enough, smelled exactly like candy corn.