The next day she waited until the golfers began trickling in from their Friday afternoon rounds. When Arlis wasn’t looking, she grabbed some towels and started knocking on doors. “Good afternoon, Mr. Samuels.” She plastered on a big smile for the gray-haired man who answered. “I thought you might like some extra towels. Sure is hot out there.” She set one of the precious candy bars she’d bought the night before on top. “I hope you had a good round, but here’s a little sugar in case you didn’t. My compliments.”

“Thanks, honey. That’s real thoughtful.” Mr. Samuels pulled out his money clip and peeled off a five-dollar bill.

By the time she left the inn that night, she’d made forty dollars. She was as proud of herself as if she’d made her first million. But if she intended to repeat her scheme on Saturday afternoon, she needed a new twist, and that was going to involve another small expenditure.

“Damn. I haven’t had one of those in years,” Mr. Samuels said when he answered the door on Saturday afternoon.

“Homemade.” She gave him her biggest, most winning smile and handed over the fresh towels, along with one of the individually wrapped Rice Krispies treats she’d stayed up until well past midnight last night making. Cookies would have been better, but her culinary skills were limited. “I only wish it were a cold beer,” she said. “We sure appreciate you gentlemen staying here.”

This time he gave her a ten.

Arlis, already suspicious over their dwindling towel inventory, nearly caught her twice, but Meg managed to dodge her, and as she approached the third-floor suite, registered to a Dexter O’Connor, her uniform pocket held a comfortable weight. Mr. O’Connor had been out yesterday when she’d stopped, but today a tall, strikingly beautiful woman wrapped in one of the inn’s white terry robes answered the door. Even just out of the shower, with her face scrubbed free of makeup and strands of inky hair clinging to her neck, she was flawless—tall and thin with bold green eyes and iceberg-size diamond studs in her ears. She didn’t look like a Dexter. And neither did the man Meg glimpsed over her shoulder.

Ted Beaudine sat in the room’s easy chair, his shoes kicked off, a beer in hand. Something clicked, and Meg recognized the brunette as the woman Ted had kissed at the gas station a few weeks ago.

“Oh, good. Extra towels.” Her splashy diamond wedding ring sparkled as she grabbed the package on top. “And a homemade Rice Krispies treat! Look, Teddy! How long has it been since you’ve had a Rice Krispies treat?”

“Can’t say as I recall,” Teddy replied.

The woman tucked the towels under her arm and pulled at the plastic wrap. “I love these things. Give her a ten, will you?”

He didn’t move. “I’m fresh out of tens. Or any other currency.”

“Hold on.” The woman turned, presumably to get her purse, only to whip back around. “Holy Jesus!” She dropped the towels. “You’re the wedding wrecker! I didn’t recognize you in your uniform.”

Ted unwound from the chair and approached the door. “Selling baked goods without a license, Meg? That’s a direct violation of city code.”

“These are gifts, Mr. Mayor.”

“Do Birdie and Arlis know about your gifts?”

The brunette pushed in front of him. “Never mind that.” Her green eyes glittered with excitement. “The wedding wrecker. I can’t believe it. Come on in. I have some questions for you.” She shoved the door fully open and tugged on Meg’s arm. “I want to hear exactly why you thought What’s-Her-Name was so wrong for Teddy.”

Meg had finally met someone other than Haley Kittle who didn’t hate her for what she’d done. It wasn’t exactly shocking that this person would be Ted’s apparently married lover.

Ted stepped in front of the woman and disconnected her hand from Meg’s arm. “Best for you to get back to work, Meg. I’ll be sure to let Birdie know how diligent you are.”

Meg gritted her teeth, but Ted wasn’t quite done. “The next time you talk to Lucy, be sure to tell her how much I miss her?” With a flick of his finger, he tugged open the loose knot on the front of the woman’s robe, pulled her against him, and kissed her hard.

Moments later, the door slammed in Meg’s face.


Meg hated hypocrisy, and knowing everybody in town regarded Ted as a model of decency when he was banging a married woman made her crazy. She’d bet anything the affair had been going on while he and Lucy were engaged.

She pulled up to the church that evening and began the laborious process of dragging all her possessions back inside—her suitcase, towels, food, the bed linens she’d borrowed from the inn and intended to return as soon as she could. She refused to spend another second thinking about Ted Beaudine. Better to concentrate on the positive. Thanks to the golfers, she had money for gas, Tampax, and some groceries. Not a huge accomplishment, but enough so she could postpone making any humiliating phone calls to her friends.

But her relief was short-lived. On Sunday, the very next evening, as she was about to leave work, she discovered that one of the golfers—and it didn’t take any great detective skills to figure out which one—had complained to Birdie about a maid trolling for tips. Birdie called Meg to her office and, with a great deal of satisfaction, fired her on the spot.


The library rebuilding committee sat in Birdie’s living room enjoying a pitcher of her famous pineapple mojitos. “Haley’s mad at me again.” Their hostess leaned back into the streamlined midcentury armchair she’d just had reupholstered in vanilla linen, a fabric that wouldn’t have lasted a day at Emma’s house. “Because I fired Meg Koranda, of all things. She says Meg won’t be able to find another job. I pay my maids more than a fair wage, and Miss Hollywood shouldn’t have been deliberately soliciting tips.”

The women exchanged glances. They all knew Birdie had paid Meg three dollars less an hour than she was paying everybody else, something that had never sat quite right with Emma, even though Ted had come up with the idea.

Zoey toyed with a glittery pink pasta shell that had dropped off the pin she’d stuck to the collar of her sleeveless white blouse. “Haley’s always had a soft heart. I’ll bet Meg took advantage of it.”

“A soft head is more like it,” Birdie said. “I know y’all have noticed the way she’s been dressing lately, and I appreciate that none of you have mentioned it. She thinks lettin’ her boobs hang out will make Kyle Bascom notice her.”

“I had him when I taught sixth grade,” Zoey said. “And let me just say that Haley is way too smart for that boy.”

“Try telling her that.” Birdie drummed her fingers on the chair arm.

Kayla put down her lip gloss and picked up her mojito. “Haley’s right about one thing. Nobody in this town is going to hire Meg Koranda, not if they want to look Ted Beaudine in the face.”

Emma had never liked bullying, and the town’s vindictiveness toward Meg was starting to make her uncomfortable. At the same time, she couldn’t forgive Meg for the part she’d played in hurting one of her favorite people.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about Ted lately.” Shelby hooked one side of her blond bob behind her ear and gazed down at her new peep-toe ballerinas.

“Haven’t we all.” Kayla frowned and touched her pavé diamond star necklace.

“Way too much.” Zoey started to chew on her bottom lip.

Ted’s newly single status had once again raised their hopes. Emma wished they’d both accept the fact that he would never commit to either of them. Kayla was too high maintenance, and Zoey inspired his admiration but not his love.

It was time to draw the conversation back to the subject they’d been avoiding, how they were going to raise the rest of the money to repair the library. The town’s normal sources of big money, which included Emma and husband Kenny, still hadn’t recovered from the hits their portfolios had taken in the last economic downturn, and they’d already been tapped out by half a dozen other vital local charities in need of rescue. “Anyone have any new fund-raising idea?” Emma asked.

Shelby clicked her index finger against her front tooth. “I might.”

Birdie groaned. “No more bake sales. Last time, four people got food poisoning from Mollie Dodge’s coconut custard pie.”

“The quilt raffle was a dreadful embarrassment,” Emma couldn’t help but add, even though she didn’t like contributing to the general negativity.

“Who wants a dead squirrel staring back at them every time they go into their bedroom?” Kayla said.

“It was a kitten, not a dead squirrel,” Zoey declared.

“It sure looked like a dead squirrel to me,” Kayla retorted.

“Not a bake sale and not a quilt raffle.” Shelby had a faraway look in her eyes. “Something else. Something . . . bigger. More interesting.”

They all regarded her inquisitively, but Shelby shook her head. “I need to think about it first.”

No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t get any more out of her.


Nobody would hire Meg. Not even at the ten-unit motel on the edge of town. “You got any idea how many permits it takes to keep this place open?” the ruddy-faced manager told her. “I ain’t doin’ nothin’ to piss off Ted Beaudine, not as long as he’s mayor. Hell, even if he wasn’t mayor . . .”

So Meg drove from one business to the next, her car guzzling gas like a construction worker gulping water on a summer afternoon. Three days passed, then four. By the fifth day, as she gazed across the desk at the newly hired assistant manager of Windmill Creek Country Club, her desperation had developed a bitter center. As soon as this interview fell through, she’d have to swallow her final shard of pride and call Georgie.

The assistant manager was an officious preppy type, thin, with glasses and a neatly trimmed beard he tugged on as he explained that, despite the club’s lowly status, being only semiprivate and not nearly as prestigious as his former place of employment, Windmill Creek was still the home of Dallas Beaudine and Kenny Traveler, two of the biggest legends in professional golf. As if she didn’t know.

Windmill Creek was also the home club of Ted Beaudine and his cronies, and she’d never have wasted gas coming here if she hadn’t seen the item in the Wynette Weekly announcing that the club’s newly hired assistant manager had last worked at a golf club in Waco, which made him a stranger in town. On the chance that he didn’t yet know she was the Voldemort of Wynette, she’d immediately picked up the phone and, to her shock, snagged this afternoon’s interview.

“The job’s eight to five,” he said, “with Mondays off.”

She’d gotten so used to rejection that she’d let her mind wander. She had no idea what job he was talking about, or if he’d actually offered it to her. “That’s—that’s perfect,” she said. “Eight to five is perfect.”

“The pay’s not much, but if you do your job right, the tips should be good, especially on weekends.”

Tips! “I’ll take it!”

He eyed her fictionalized résumé, then took in the outfit she’d pulled together from her desperately limited wardrobe—a gauzy petal skirt, white tank, studded black belt, gladiator sandals, and her Sung dynasty earrings. “Are you sure?” he said doubtfully. “Driving a drink cart isn’t much of a job.”

She bit back the urge to tell him she wasn’t much of an employee. “It’s perfect for me.” Desperation made it alarmingly easy to set aside her beliefs about golf courses destroying the environment.

As he led her outside to the snack shop to meet her supervisor, she could barely comprehend that she finally had a job. “Exclusive courses don’t have drink carts,” he sniffed. “But the members here can’t seem to wait for the turn to grab their next beer.”

Meg had grown up around horses, and she had no idea what “the turn” was. She didn’t care. She had a job.

When she got home later that afternoon, she parked behind an old storage shed she’d discovered in the undergrowth beyond the stone fence that surrounded the graveyard. It had long ago lost its roof, and vines, prickly pear, and dried grasses grew around its collapsing walls. She blew her curls off her sweaty forehead as she hauled her suitcase out of the trunk. At least she’d been able to hide her small stash of groceries behind some abandoned kitchen appliances, but even so, the constant packing and unpacking were wearing on her. As she lugged her possessions through the graveyard, she dreamed of air-conditioning and a place to stay where she wouldn’t have to erase her presence every morning.