Chapter 14 The This Town Is Too Small Trope
If there was ever a moment to start smoking again, this was it.
A couple of the town heroes were still spraying down the fireplace with a hose while I watched from the Happily Ever After mobile.
Heaven was waiting in the attic with the bats like a princess waiting to be rescued.
My spirits swung from “It’s not that bad” to “Let’s drive back to LA and pretend this never happened. ”
As I fished around in the driver’s side door pocket for a cigarette, a man in an oversized jacket with reflective lettering that spelled out Valentine fire came over and leaned in the window.
“Hey there,” he said. “Hang tight and don’t go back inside till we give you the all clear.”
“Got it.” But soon, I was tapping my foot impatiently. The fire was out and I needed to get these local heroes off the property before Heaven let herself out and decided to get under one of their big rubber jackets for a bite. Not to mention sunrise was coming. It was time to wrap this up.
Fuck it. I went back inside. In the house, no one looked that busy or concerned. One of the firefighters was rolling up a hose, while another casually thumbed through a stack of my books.
At the sight of me, he glanced up without bothering to hide his snooping. “Hi, I’m Pete.”
“I’m Tiffenie,” I said, edging closer.
“I was just browsing through your library. Self-help, huh?”
I was about to be mad when he said, “I’ve been meaning to read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People for a while. Like, since high school.” He laughed at himself and thumbed through some other titles. Who Moved My Cheese? and Get Out of Your Own Way and A Beginner’s Guide to BDSM.
“You can have that one if you want.” The diagrams were a little too hard to follow. All those straps and knots—I might as well have signed up for a sailing class.
“Uh…thanks.”
“It’s signed, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Author signatures, I mean.” BDSM wasn’t for me.
I dated a guy who wanted to experiment with leather and whips and all of that.
I was just trying to be nice. If he wanted to be whipped, that was cool with me, I just didn’t want to do it. To be fair, I did like biting him.
Another firefighter, his face shield thrown up and his jacket off, walked over to me. His name tag said Dylan in bold type. “It’s a good thing you called when you did. You’ve got minimal damage. It’s not nothing, but it could have been a lot worse.”
“That’s great news,” I said. “Thank you!”
“Let me show you what happened,” he said, walking over to the fireplace and beckoning for me to follow. “The chimney was blocked. Some kind of animal nest, I suspect.”
That seemed likely. “Is the house safe now?”
He looked around with an amused expression. “Well, I wouldn’t say that. The electric is off and there’s no heat. You’re not staying here, are you?”
“I just got back to town. This was my Aunt Mildred’s place.”
“You’re—” He stopped and gave me a careful look. “You know, I never thought I’d see you back in town.”
Here we go again. Never in a million years did I think I’d have to play the role of Tiffany Amanda Blair so often or so soon.
“Remember Homecoming our junior year?” He chuckled.
Uh-oh. I stared back like a deer in the headlights before saying, “We got so drunk, right?”
He laughed in a way that let me know I’d guessed right. Nothing to do in a small town but drink and have sex. That was true in the olden times and it’s true today. I suppose you could go canoeing or read the classics, but who does that?
In a more somber voice, Dylan said, “Sorry about your aunt. She was a nice lady. I don’t think she ever skipped a day of church.”
“I’m going to miss her,” I said, with downcast eyes.
“I’m just glad you’re okay.” A cloud passed over Dylan’s face and he leaned down. Darkly, he said, “A lot of people around here thought you were dead. It’s been a real long time since anyone’s seen you, Tiffany.”
For all I knew, the real Tiffany Amanda Blair could be dead. A foggy memory of a blond girl in a passport book surfaced. I’d watched the lady I’d bought the ID from scrape Tiffany’s photo off.
I certainly didn’t know what she was like in high school or why she ran away.
The only information I had was her Social Security number, her date of birth, and the fact that she hadn’t wanted to be Tiffany Amanda Blair anymore.
She might be in the ground, buried in an anonymous grave.
Meanwhile, I was moving into her aunt’s bed-and-breakfast. A sadness washed over me.
So many times in my long life, I’d seen young girls meet fates they didn’t deserve. I’d been that young woman a few times.
Dylan wandered over to the fireplace. “What were you burning, anyway?” He kicked the soggy pile of partially burned cottagecore items and religious paraphernalia.
Willing him to shift his attention somewhere besides the smoking Bibles, I asked, “Why didn’t the stuff in the fireplace burn to ash?”
“Sometimes the fire can get going in the chimney itself, leaving combustibles in the fireplace partially burned. It looks like that’s what happened here.”
Dylan, an upstanding small-town guy who apparently went to church often enough to know Aunt Mildred never missed a day, nudged a partially burned Bible with his steel-toed firefighter’s boot. “Is this a—?” he inquired, leaning down to read the cover of the charred Bible.
I looked around at the men with their crew cuts and clean-shaven jaws.
Well, one of them had an out-of-control beard and a tattoo that said Mom, but that was just his “Sweet Home Alabama” beer-drinking right.
Here I was on my first day in Valentine with a smoking guide to Christian courtship in my fireplace.
All of Vlad’s warnings about small-town folks came back to me.
Salem was probably only a few hours from Valentine.
I’d seen it on the map, one state below.
It was a flashing yellow reminder—be careful, Cotton Mather’s descendants are near.
I half wanted to call Heaven down to drain them and be done with it.
“Wow, is that a phone book?” I smiled innocently. “Remember when we used those? Probably not since last time we saw each other, or before.”
But then Dylan fished out a large portrait of Jesus tending to a flock of lambs. It was charred around the edges, leaving Jesus and a couple of lambs sooty but visible.
Dylan looked up from the portrait in shock. The guy to whom I’d gifted my BDSM manual joined him. “What’s Jesus doing in here?” Pete asked, his brow crinkling in concern.
“Oh, that’s not Jesus!” My flesh sizzled as his name passed my lips. Luckily, the smoke from my burning flesh blended with the smoke already lingering in the air. “This boy band member in a toga is definitely not our savior.” I laughed.
Dylan eyed me skeptically. “You used to be a prayer leader, Tiffany.”
“Which is why I can’t stand by a false Jesus.
” I walked up to the painting and boldly announced, “This isn’t Jesus.
” I dredged up a few partially remembered truths.
“Our modern image is based on Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings, but he was really just painting his boyfriend and then everyone else copied it.
Which is how we ended up worshipping sexy white cheeses.
” Cheeses and Jesus sound remarkably similar if you don’t enunciate too clearly, and I couldn’t say his name one more time without creating a noticeable cloud of smoke.
To be fair, people also worshipped sexy white cheeses. I did in my day.
Dylan looked confused, which was better than angry.
I gestured at the blond-haired, blue-eyed shepherd. “That guy is just some Renaissance hottie. Even worse, he looks like my ex-boyfriend.” Cringing like I meant it, I said, “My ex with a halo. I just can’t.”
At that, Dylan snickered. “God, Tiffany, you’re funny, aren’t you?”
I laughed along with him. Whatever kept me from getting staked.
To change topics and steer them away from the fireplace, I hazarded a request. “Would you mind helping me board up some of these windows?” I just couldn’t sleep in the bathtub for a second night.
“No problem,” Dylan said. “But you know, you really shouldn’t be staying here.”
“Thanks, but I’m fine, and I want to start cleaning bright and early tomorrow.”
“No more fires, okay?” Dylan said.
“I promise.”
After he nailed a few boards over the bedroom windows, Dylan walked back in with a piece of paper covered in bold red and black lettering. Even damp from the snow, it still looked official. “Bad news,” Dylan said, with the look of a doctor delivering a terminal diagnosis.
TOWN OF VALENTINE BOARD OF HEALTH NOTICE OF ORDER TO VACATE
In accordance with the Vermont Code of Health and the Valentine Rules of Incorporation, the City of Valentine performed an inspection of the premises at 623 Maple Lane, the Valentine Bed-and-Breakfast, on November 8, 2024.
Based on reasonable information and belief, the inspector found the condition of the premises to be a clear and imminent threat to the health and well-being of the occupants and potential guests.
Under the authority granted us by the above-referenced rules, the City of Valentine is condemning the property and ordering occupants to vacate immediately.
I read the notice with growing horror.
“It must have blown off during the storm,” Dylan said with a frown. “You might want to pop down and talk to someone soon. I probably shouldn’t even let you stay.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said, with a confidence I didn’t feel. Like a woman in command of my destiny, I walked to the fireplace and tossed the paper in. It floated down gently like a feather in the wind and landed atop a sign that had previously said Let your Faith be bigger than your fear.
“Well, all right then.” He shrugged. “Good luck.”
“Don’t worry about me. It’s just paperwork.” To Pete, I called, “Let me know if you enjoy that book I gave you.”
Dylan stopped on his way out. “Oh, if you’re going to be in town, you should join the holiday decorating committee.”
Hell no.
“Actually, I’ll just tell Jessica you’re coming. She’d kill me if she knew I saw you and didn’t pressure you into joining.” Dylan grinned.
I laughed like it was funny. “Sure,” I said.
“They’re meeting at the tavern tomorrow night at 8:30. I’ll give you my number in case you decide to go.”
I had no choice but to exchange numbers with this hot, religious fireman.
This night had gone sideways in so many ways that I had lost count.
The house was condemned. Worse yet, everyone knew Tiffany Amanda Blair. My first two encounters with locals had been on a dark roadway and in an unlit house, but I needed to be ready and able to impersonate Tiffany with a -y with the lights on. Also, I needed to charge my phone.
When the firefighters left, I tucked the Valentine High yearbook from the attic under my arm and headed out to the car to charge my phone and do some research.
The trucks had done a number on the yard, the thin veneer of Hallmark worn away with one crisis.
It was all tire tracks and churned-up dirt.
Where I had seen a winter wonderland before, I now saw a light dusting of snow barely covering the advanced decay of fall, leaves frozen for a moment before they could return to the earth. Much like the house itself.
Maybe I was just being dramatic. It had been a long day.
In the full dark of 4:30 a.m., in an idling hearse, I flipped on the car’s dome light and pored over the yearbook of a normal teenage girl. Tiffany played the flute, was in the school play, and delivered meals to the elderly. In the senior superlatives section, she was listed under Best smile.
My most charitable activity was not murdering people. At least, I tried not to murder people.
With a heavy sigh and a sense that I was about to lift a burden I might not be able to carry, I traced handwritten notes on the inside cover. At least three people had written “Never change.”
Too late.