Chapter Seven
Trick-or-treating in a small Texas town is a big thing.
Trunk-or-treat, a custom adapted by the city council a few years back, began at the community church parking lot at five o’clock.
Anyone who wanted to participate in the event could park in the church parking lot and hand out candy from the trunk of their vehicle.
Monica and her assistant, Anabelle, dressed like beach bums and handed candy out of the tote bag Monica had used in Florida.
Tall, lanky Anabelle wore sunglasses and a big floppy hat to cover her short gray hair.
“Does this bring back memories?” Anabelle asked.
“Yep, but when Fiona and I were little girls, we went from house to house in Hatch. This kind of thing didn’t happen until after we both left home,” Monica answered.
“Not when you were kids, but last month in Florida. Isn’t that the bag you bought special for the trip?”
“Yes, it is, and yes, it does bring back memories. I may go there again next year, but I don’t expect to ever be able to top that vacation,” she answered.
“Ready to tell me all about it?” Anabelle asked.
Monica was glad to see a set of twins, one dressed like a nurse and the other her patient, come to her vehicle to keep her from having to tell Anabelle about her amazing trip.
If she had to talk about it, she would fall apart, and besides, she wanted to keep all the memories to herself.
Every night for the past two weeks, she had questioned her decision to not throw caution to the wind and go home with Spencer.
“Don’t y’all look cute,” she said as she put a few pieces of candy in their plastic pumpkins. “What is wrong with this poor little girl?” she asked the little girl dressed like a nurse.
“She’s got the eipizootus,” the little girl said seriously.
“I see.” Monica played along. “What are you giving her to cure this horrible disease?”
“Lots of candy,” the nurse answered seriously.
Anabelle gave each of them another handful of candy. “You might need extra to get her over such a thing.”
“Thank you, ma’ams,” the girls said in unison.
“I feel better already.” The patient smiled up at them.
Anabelle opened a Snickers bar and offered one to Monica. “Now, back to what happened that’s made you melancholy since you got home from Florida.”
“No, thanks, and I’m still not ready to talk about it.” Monica held all the details of her time with Spencer close to her heart, afraid that even speaking of those magical days and nights would tarnish the memories.
“What’s the matter with you? I’ve never seen you turn down a Snickers bar. They are your favorite. Remember what you told me when you first took the job?”
“All other candy has fat grams and calories but not Snickers. They are healthy. Read the ingredients. Peanuts, skim milk, and egg whites. All of those are good for the heart,” she argued.
“Then why have you quit keeping a bowl full of the miniatures on your desk? Do they remind you of Florida?”
Monica handed out candy to another group of kids before she answered. “I guess my taste buds are changing. Pretzels and barbecue chips are better these days.”
“That place turned you around for sure,” Anabelle said.
“Probably so,” Monica agreed.
At the end of the event, Monica tossed the beach bag in the back and closed the hatch on her SUV.
She drove Anabelle to her house on the other side of town and then headed to her own place.
She didn’t have time for supper, so she was starving by the time she parked, got her purse and tote bag full of the clothes she wore to work from the back seat, and made it inside.
She tossed both on the sofa and headed straight for the kitchen, where she made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and poured a glass of cold milk.
She sat down at the table and had eaten half of it when someone rang her doorbell.
She pushed back her chair and muttered about pranksters all the way across the living area and the foyer.
Expecting it to be kids playing ring and run on Halloween night, she swung the door open and sucked in air.
“If you are hiding in the bushes, you better know I’m not in the mood …
” She stopped and stared at her sister standing right in front of her.
“Can I come in?” she asked.
“Of course.” Monica stepped to the side and blinked several times, but Fiona did not disappear.
“What are you doing in this part of the world?” Monica would only need one finger if she was counting the times that Fiona had come to her house.
Her sister was always jet-setting off to another location or country to advance her modeling career.
It had to be at least two years since she had even seen her only sibling.
She didn’t ask why Fiona looked like hell with her red, swollen eyes, limp blonde hair, and not a drop of makeup on her face. Or why she was dressed in a gray sweatsuit that looked like it came from a thrift store. Surely this was not her sister who modeled for fancy underwear stores.
“Are you okay? Can I get you something to drink? Have you eaten?” Monica fired off a barrage of questions.
“No, I’m not okay, and I didn’t know where else to go. I would take some sweet tea and half a dozen crackers. If I keep that down, it will be a miracle.” Fiona collapsed on the sofa and began to weep.
Monica grabbed a box of tissues and handed them to her.
Fiona had to be dying. She was pale and disheveled and looked terrible.
Suddenly, all the jealousy Monica had known throughout the years turned into a big ball of guilt that lay like a rock in her heart.
She sat down beside Fiona and hugged her.
“Please talk to me. How long have you got and what’s the diagnosis?”
Fiona dried her eyes and glared at Monica. “I’m not dying, but I might as well be. My body will be ruined. My career is over. I don’t know what to do. You are the sensible one. I need your help.”
“Of course I will help, but first you’ve got to tell me what is wrong,” Monica told her.
Fiona’s face crumpled again, but she held back more tears. “I’m so sorry for the way I’ve treated you.”
Monica remembered the last time they were together—Thanksgiving two years ago. Fiona had called her a nerd and told her if she would give a little more effort with her makeup and hair, she could be mildly pretty.
“That’s in the past. What do you need me to do?” Monica asked, putting the pain of her sister’s ugly remarks behind her even though it was tough.
“Can I stay here for a while, like maybe five or six months?”
“Of course. I have an extra bedroom, but we’ll have to share a bathroom. Is this problem going to resolve itself after that time?”
“Yes, but I don’t know what or how to tell the folks. Everyone in the county is going to be disappointed that their famous person has had to …” She stopped and rushed to the bathroom.
Monica followed her and held her long blonde hair back while she threw up in the toilet. “Are you on chemo?” she asked.
“No, but that couldn’t be any worse than this. It’s supposed to get better after a while, but right now it hits every evening about this time.” Fiona straightened up and rinsed her mouth at the bathroom sink.
“My God!” Monica exclaimed when the truth finally hit her. “Are you pregnant?”
Fiona nodded. “I thought I had the flu, so I took a couple of weeks off. I’ve never been regular because I don’t eat right. At least that’s what the nutritionist tells me. I went to the doctor a few days ago, and she told me that I’m about four months along.”
“Have you thought about what you’re going to tell Mama?” Monica asked.
Another nod before Fiona headed back down the hallway. “I have, but I don’t even know where to start. I’m sure she wants a wedding first.”
Monica followed her. “Have you told the father?”
“I can’t do that,” she moaned.
“Why? Whoever it is has a right to know.”
Fiona stretched out on the sofa and put a throw pillow under her head. “It’s not that I don’t want to tell him. It’s that it could be one of three different men that I slept with the week my doctor said that I conceived.”
“Sweet Jesus!” Monica gasped. “It’s not a matter of when we tell Mama, but how. What if she asks the same question I did?”
“I’ll need your help with that, too,” Fiona groaned.
Spencer awoke to the aroma of bacon and coffee finding its way up the curved staircase in his house.
For a brief second, he thought he was back in the little condo in Florida with Monica, but one blink let him know that was not true.
He threw back the covers and wished that it was Monday.
Sundays were tough with nothing to do but watch football games all afternoon.
He pulled on a pair of navy sweats and a T-shirt, went downstairs to the kitchen, and found Polly making breakfast.
“Bacon?” he asked.
“I’m hoping that it will raise your spirits. You haven’t been yourself since you came home from your vacation,” Polly told him.
She had worked for his parents from the time he was a baby until they downsized and moved into a smaller house.
When that happened, they didn’t need her full-time anymore, so Spencer hired her to work for him and Zoe.
She had a small house in the backyard on the other side of the pool, and most of the time she left his supper on the stove and went to her own place at five o’clock.
“I don’t think bacon will cure me, but thank you,” Spencer said.
“You have talked things through with me since you were a little boy.”
He picked up a piece of crispy bacon from the plate she set before him. “And you gave me good advice. I should have listened to you when you told me to think twice about Zoe. You told me that she would only bring me pain and heartache the whole time we were dating.”
Polly brought her plate to the table and sat down at the other end. “If you had, it would have saved you from a lot of heartache. But that’s yesterday’s news. What is today’s headline that makes you so melancholy? Has a woman caught your eye?”
“I believe she might have taken my heart,” Spencer admitted.
“In Florida?” Polly asked.
He pushed back his chair and refilled both their coffee cups. “Why do you think that?”
“Because you came home with a hang dog expression on your face, and you have not been happy since then. You didn’t even act like this when Zoe left you.”
“I was angry then,” he said. “Now, I just wish I could go back and spend more than a week with her. Her name was Monica, and we had an amazing time.”
“Call her,” Polly said bluntly.
“I can’t. We didn’t exchange phone numbers, and I can’t get in touch with her because I have no idea where she calls home other than Texas, and that’s a helluva big state. I can’t even start with looking up her workplace.” He groaned.
Polly shot a dirty look down the table. “Are you still this stupid?”
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“You had a double dose of stupid when you tied your wagon to Zoe. But this is even worse. Why on earth would you spend time with a woman and not find out more about her? Especially once you thought you might be falling in love with her?” She stopped for a breath and then went ahead.
“Did you at least figure out her last name? And if so, why haven’t you got on the internet?
You can figure out how to find all kinds of people there.
And if that don’t work, you are rich enough to hire one of them private eye people?
I watch enough cop shows in the evenings to know that they can find someone in an hour. ”
“I can’t answer or even remember all those questions at once, Polly.
I did find out that Monica Smith is the name that she gave the lady in the hotel where we were staying.
I’ve spent hours looking at all the Monica Smiths on Facebook.
None of them are the right ones, so evidently, she was using a false last name, or maybe she isn’t on Facebook.
I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, but I hired a hacker to find her, but he had no luck, either. ”
“Let me see a picture of her,” Polly said.
Spencer shook his head. “Don’t have one.”
“I didn’t teach you a damn thing, did I?” Polly sighed loudly.
Spencer shrugged. “Apparently not.”
“On my cop shows, a witness helps the police make a sketch. Do you think you could do that?”
He nodded. “Definitely.”
“Then hire yourself a PI and start with that. Please tell me she’s not a bottle blonde with a wicked temper.”
“No, ma’am. Dark blonde hair, green eyes, a little on the curvy side.”
“Well, that will rule out a lot of them women on the internet.”
“I hope so,” Spencer said. “Thanks for listening.”
“No problem. We’ll find your Monica. Then you can figure out whether she’s really the one for you or not. Or if, given time, you can forget her.”
“I’ve tried to do that, but she is unforgettable,” Spencer whispered.