Kitabı oku: «Burning Up», sayfa 3
CHAPTER FOUR
GABE GENTLY CLOSED his room door behind him, then ripped the towel from around his neck and flung it at the nearest wall.
It fell far short, drifting harmlessly to the old hard-wood floor.
“Hell.” Covering the distance to the crumpled terry in a single long stride, he bent and swept it up.
Only to have the towel around his waist come untucked and slide down his legs to take its place. “Son of a fucking bitch!”
He swept that one up, as well. Breathing heavily, he stood clutching both linens in white-knuckled fists as he stared blindly at the wall.
Then he gave a sharp shake of his head and got a grip. He sucked in deep, measured inhalations and slowly exhaled them until his breathing was regulated again. Jesus. What was this? He never had to struggle for control, because he never lost it in the first place.
Not since he was sixteen, at any rate. For a couple of years there, he’d been monkey wild. Fighting anything in pants. Screwing anything in skirts.
But that was a long time ago. The man he was now was deliberate. In control. Master of his rare way ward impulse.
So what had he been doing out in the hallway with the music-video princess? What the holy hell had he been thinking?
He snorted. Yeah, right. Like thought had been a big part of the equation. He’d simply acted on instinct. Because he’d known in his gut that he couldn’t watch her close that soft, pink, smart-ass mouth around her finger. Still, he could have, should have just released her hand and walked away.
Tossing his towels aside, he strode for the dresser. Yeah, well, you didn’t, so get over it. The deed was done. He thought of the series of garbage-can fires around town that he’d been dealing with for the past few weeks. That was what he should be concentrating on, tracking down the reason for those, not wasting his time rewriting a here-and-gone run-in with the new resident flirt. Either that or…
“Shit!” Grace. How the hell had he forgotten his date with Grace, even if only for a few minutes? Guilt crawled down his spine. This was the second time he’d gotten so caught up in Macy’s sexual pull that it had blown every single thought of the woman he was actually dating clean out of his mind.
Yanking open the second drawer, he collected a clean pair of jeans, then strode to the closet and ripped a cotton shirt from its hanger.
As he dressed, however, he found that merely thinking of the teacher he was scheduled to take out for a glass of wine smoothed over the minor irritations of his day. Because Grace was aptly named. She was quiet. Restful. Nice.
All of which were attributes he appreciated more than he could say considering his early life with his tumultuous party-girl mom, the fury years after she’d abdicated her responsibilities by dumping him on the system, and his time in the Detroit FD, the last six years of which he’d spent as an arson investigator forever juggling too many fires and not enough hours in the day. Taking this county fire-chief job had been the first step in alleviating the overload of stress he’d lived with for too long. Being with Grace, absorbing the tranquility she radiated, felt like the next.
A little peace was something he’d been in search of for a long time. He’d had enough craziness and tension to last a lifetime. So, hell, yeah. Given even the prospect of a little serenity injected into his life?
He’d be a fool not to latch on to Grace.
MACY STRODE INTO the kitchen where her aunt was washing up the pans from breakfast. “Hey, Auntie Lenore,” she said, grabbing an apple out of the bowl on the counter and polishing it on her shirt. “Janna’s settled in our room for a while and Tyler’s over at Charlie’s. Charlie’s mom said she’d get the boys to their game, so I sent along everything I thought he might need.” She bit into the apple. Seeing her aunt in her natural milieu gave her a surge of pleasure every bit as strong as her first glimpse had last week.
Lenore turned off the faucet and turned to face her, taking in Macy’s severe ponytail, bloodred lipstick and Goth eye makeup. “Let me guess,” she said dryly. “You’re heading into town.”
Macy took another bite as her aunt inventoried her short pin-striped pleated skirt and stretchy black U-neck girl-T. The older woman’s gaze lingered for a moment on her black spiked dog collar before moving on to—
“Oh, honey, no. You got a tattoo?”
“Nah.” She smiled at the pained expression her aunt couldn’t hide, then glanced down at the flame-winged skull on her inner forearm. “Though I may be one of the few of my generation who hasn’t—at least in L.A. This is just for fun, a press-on/wash-off. And yeah, if it’s okay with you, I am gonna run into town. I won’t be gone long. I have a check I need to cash. I should have done it earlier in the week but I enjoyed just hanging around and catching up with you guys. Don’t worry, though, I’ll be back in plenty of time to get Janna ready for Tyler’s game. Do you need anything while I’m there?”
“No, sweetheart, thanks. I’m good for a while.” Lenore flashed a crooked smile. “I actually remembered my shopping list the other day. It’s amazing what a difference that makes.”
Macy laughed and slung an arm around her aunt, stooping to press a kiss on her cheek before heading out the back door.
It was only a couple of miles to town, and within minutes she was whipping her Corvette into a parking space a few doors down from Sterling Savings and Trust. But then she simply sat in her car, staring at the gold lettering on the plate glass window of Smokey’s Grill.
She’d reached the turnoff to Bud and Lenore’s boardinghouse the other day before the highway passed through Sugarville, so this was her first time in town in… Wow. More than a couple of years now.
Not that anything had changed. It still looked like a town caught in a time capsule, with its lack of fast-food chains and its two-story-maximum historic brick or stone buildings that comprised the three blocks of Commerce Street. For the same reasons, it was an exceptionally pretty town.
And despite her trying junior and senior years in high school or the fact that she’d barely flipped her tassel to the other side of her mortarboard before blowing town, there had been times she’d missed it dreadfully.
But mostly, she acknowledged, leaving had been the best present she’d ever given herself.
Sitting here patting herself on the back over it wasn’t getting her check cashed, however, and impatient with her procrastination, she snatched her purse off the passenger seat and climbed from the car. She sauntered to the bank on the corner, feeling as if prying eyes were watching her every move but knowing she was likely being paranoid.
Air-conditioning pebbled her nearly bare arms as she stepped into the oak-walled, marble-floored lobby a moment later. Digging her check from her purse, she crossed to the nearest old-fashioned, iron-barred teller’s window. “Hello—” smiling at the maybe-twenty brunette manning it, she read the girl’s name plate “—Lucy. Can you cash this for me?”
She signed the back of the check and slipped it beneath the iron grill, then pulled her wallet from her bag to root for the identification that, given the size of the check, she was sure to need. But as she withdrew her driver’s license she realized the girl hadn’t responded and, raising her head, discovered the brunette staring at her.
“Omigawd,” the young woman breathed. “I can’t believe it. It is you. You’re That Girl.”
Damn. She would’ve thought the teller was too young to remember her, but apparently her fricking reputation back in high school had filtered down even to the elementary level.
“You’re that girl in all the videos—Jack Savage’s girlfriend.”
Ah. It wasn’t her old rep the brunette was talking about but rather her newer claim to fame. Some of the tension went out of her shoulders. “Jack and I are just friends,” she said cheerfully. “We’re not—and never have been—lovers.”
“No kidding? Wait ’til I tell my friends I got the inside scoop straight from the horse’s mouth! This is ginormous!”
“I’m happy to help you one-up.” She inched the check farther beneath the grill with her fingertips. “Would you mind cashing my check?”
“Oh! Sure.” But when the teller looked at it, she frowned. “Oh,” she said, glancing back at Macy. “This isn’t drawn on us. Do you have an account here?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. O’James,” she said with patent regret, “but this is something I have to have approved. Let me just get our manager, Mrs. Thorensen.”
The young woman let herself out of the teller’s cage and Macy turned to watch her cross the lobby to a woman in a black suit presiding over an ornate desk in the corner. The manager glanced across the room at her, then rose to her feet and came over.
Extending a hand, she said, “Macy? You probably don’t remember me, but I’m—”
“Kelly Sherman,” she supplied, recognizing the Sugarville High class treasurer in the slightly plumper, ten-years-older woman standing before her.
The bank manager gave her a surprisingly friendly smile for someone Macy remembered as perpetually desperate back in the day to please Liz Picket.
Liz, who had hated Macy’s guts.
“It’s Kelly Thorensen now. Why don’t you come over to my desk and we’ll see what we can do about getting you your money.”
When they’d settled themselves across from each other, Kelly looked at her and said, “Are you in town for a while?”
“Yes. You may have heard that my cousin, Janna, was hit by a car a while back. I’m here to lend a hand until she gets back on her feet.”
“Yes, I did hear that, and I’m so sorry. The main reason I asked, though, is we can’t cash a check of this size for a noncustomer.”
And there was the knife in the ribs she’d expected upon recognizing the banker. She had to hand it to Kelly, though, the woman managed not to let her satisfaction show. She was clearly worlds more sophisticated than she’d been in high school.
But then the banker grimaced with genuine regret and said, “I truly am sorry, Macy. If you’re going to be in town for a while, though, perhaps you’d like to open a savings account with us. We still have to wait for the check to clear, but the balance will of course accrue interest from today’s date.”
“That sounds fair,” she agreed slowly. She’d run into this situation a time or two; she’d simply forgotten about them because most of her employment checks were drawn on the bank where she had her account. She blew out a breath. “I meant to take care of this before I left home, but I forgot in my rush to pack and get on the road.”
Kelly opened a form on her computer and started keying in information Macy supplied in answer to the manager’s questions. Within minutes, she’d sent it to the printer. Sitting back in her chair, she smiled at Macy. “What a glamorous life you must lead in L.A.”
“I don’t know about glamorous,” Macy replied, because mostly the work she did was work. And there was a phoniness prevalent in the industry that often wore thin. “But it’s satisfying work.” Especially now that she was in the creative end of producing music videos rather than acting in someone else’s vision of a song.
“You going to our ten-year reunion next month?”
God, no. “Oh. Wow. Has it been ten years already? A reunion, huh? This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Well, you should come. It’ll be fun.”
Uh-huh. Because I had so many friends in high school. “I’ll keep it in mind, but so much depends on how well Janna’s leg improves. Did I tell you she’s starting physical therapy next week?”
They exchanged a few more pleasantries before she headed back to the car. All things considered, she thought in bemusement as she climbed in, that hadn’t gone half badly.
When she said as much to Janna a short while later, after recounting her experience, her cousin gave her a wry smile. “So maybe the good citizens of Sugarville have moved on more than you’ve given them credit for.” Then she teased, “I mean, I know you think it’s all about you—”
“You mean it’s not? What’s with that?” But she wasn’t up to kidding about this, and rubbing her forehead, she stared at her cousin. “You know, I never gave it much thought, since I was only here for a few days at a time to see you and the rest of the family. But I guess I’ve sort of been braced for the whole hornet’s nest response to my return,” she admitted soberly, “and I’m grateful as can be that Kelly was professional and gracious instead. But I doubt it’s realistic to expect that everyone will be so nice.” She shook her head. “I just wonder how not nice they’re going to be.”
Janna nodded, her expression troubled. “Yeah. That’s the million-dollar question.”
“IS THAT MACY O’JAMES?”
“I heard she was back in town.”
“She’s got some nerve showing her face after all the heartache she’s caused!”
“Hey, you know what they say. No-class white trash then, no-class white trash now.”
The voices carried clearly in the hot summer air as Macy unfolded a lawn chair under the spreading oak trees next to the bleachers and helped her cousin settle into it. “Well, I guess that answers that big-bucks question,” she murmured and made a moue of distaste. “Apparently Kelly was a fluke.”
“Oh, I imagine there’s more people like Kelly than you think.” Janna cautiously propped the heel of her cast on the plastic bucket Macy upended in front of her. “There are always going to be idiots in this town, though. So do as I do, sweetie. Ignore ’em.”
“I intend to.” Knowing better than to expect an offer from the people on the bleachers nearest Janna to make room so she could sit next to her cousin, she snapped open the blanket she’d brought along for this precise contingency and spread it on the ground on Janna’s other side. Careful to keep her knees together in deference to the shortness of her pin-striped skirt, she lowered herself upon it.
And swallowed a snort. Because wouldn’t that be just what she needed to round out this outing—to flash the young players warming up on the field? As if she didn’t have a bad enough name in this town as it was.
It would have been smarter to wear a nice conservative pair of shorts, she knew, but she was glad she hadn’t changed her clothes. For a short while, in the wake of her better-than-expected encounter with Kelly, she’d considered it. But in the end, she’d decided that a girl could simply never predict when her armor might come in handy in this town. Outrageous clothing was her armor of choice. And it was coming in handy now.
Then Janna’s words sank in, and she scooted closer to her cousin, leaning in to ask in a low voice, “What do you mean, do as you do?”
Janna shrugged. “When Sean and I divorced, I lost most of my social circle,” she answered with matter-of-fact equanimity.
Macy stared. “He screwed around on you with a barely legal bimbo and your friends took his side?”
“Except for one or two of them, they were never really my friends, anyhow. Sean is a Purcell—I married up in their eyes.”
“Are you kidding?” An incredulous laugh escaped her. “Someone actually said that?”
“Nah, it wasn’t that blatant. But the cliques in this town continue long after high school.” She gave an impatient shake of her head. “No. That makes it sound like it’s a Sugarville thing, and it’s not. This sort of social maneuvering goes on everywhere. Everyone was friendly while Sean and I were married—and a few of them I’ve remained friends with. But for the most part, when he dumped me, so did the group we socialized with.”
Macy blew out a quiet breath. “I’m sorry, Janny. That must have been rough.”
Janna shrugged again. “Shit happens. You know that better than most.”
“She’s wearing a damn dog collar,” a woman on the bleachers said loudly. “I’ve never seen anything so stupid.”
Twisting around, Macy located the speaker and gave her a slow appraisal. “Interesting fashion criticism, sugar, coming from a woman who wears burgundy lip liner with pink lipstick.”
Angry color scalded the woman’s cheeks. “Bitch.”
“Yes. I am. Hence the collar.”
She heard a muffled laugh and turned back around. Charlie’s mother, Shannon, stood nearby with another woman, but if the snicker she’d heard came from either of them she saw no evidence of it now.
“Hey, ladies.” Shannon greeted them with easy cheer, flashing the ready smile Macy had noticed when she’d dropped the boys off at Charlie’s house earlier. She was a big woman with a big laugh and the same orangy-red hair as her son’s. “Mind if we join you?”
“Please do.” She patted the blanket next to her.
“Thanks. You’ve got a primo spot here.” The women settled on the blanket next to her, then Shan non leaned back so Macy could see the quietly pretty brunette on her other side. “Grace, this is Macy O’James. Macy, Grace Burdette.”
“Hi, nice to meet you.” She reached around Shannon to offer her hand, but froze midshake after the woman accepted it. “Wait. You’re Miss Burdette? As in the fourth-grade teacher?”
“You’ve heard of me?”
“I’ll say.” Belatedly, she released the other woman’s hand. And grinned. “My nephew Tyler’s going to be in your class this fall and he talks about it as if he won the lottery in the teacher sweepstakes.”
Grace’s face pinked up. “Isn’t that nice? Not to mention flattering.” She smiled crookedly. “I mean, it’s not like I’m a famous MTV video star.”
“No, you’re a teacher with serious word-of-mouth buzz going for her. That’s much cooler.”
Grace smiled in pleasure, then the game started and their attention focused on the Sugarville Sentinels who, as home team, fielded first.
Uncle Bud had given Macy the skinny on this league. Apparently, Little League sanctioned teams played in the spring, which tended to be a busy time in the farming communities. So several towns in the county had banded together to form a youth league of its own. The junior and high schools played teams from all over the state, so they had to adhere to the regular schedule. But the younger kids drew their competition from a smaller pool, which gave the parents more leeway to work around planting and harvesting schedules.
Not that it would have ever occurred to her to question the timing if Uncle Bud hadn’t told her about it last night.
Watching Tyler, who was out in right field, his baseball mitt atop his cap as he alternated gazing up at the sky and kicking tufts of grass, she grinned. She poked Janna. “I’m thinking Ty gets his attention span from the Purcell side of the family.”
Janna laughed.
Denser shade than that provided by the leafy trees suddenly blocked her light, and expecting to see rain clouds had blown in, she tipped her head back.
Only it wasn’t clouds. Instead, she found herself looking up at Gabe. His dark brows pleated over the strong thrust of his nose, he stared back down at her.
Her heart beat double time. Because as their gazes locked, an electric current seemed to pulse between them.
Then Grace leaned forward and Macy saw her smile up at him. “There you are,” the teacher said.
And gave the blanket next to her hip a sit-next-tome pat.
CHAPTER FIVE
LOUNGING BACK ON his elbows next to Grace, Gabe watched Macy’s animated gestures as she laughed and talked with Janna, Shannon and his date. Jesus. Was there no escaping this woman? It just went to show it didn’t pay to get too complacent. Because Macy O’James was not a restful female to be around, and more than once since that night in the hall he’d mentally congratulated himself on the wide berth he’d managed to give her. Yes, they had to share the dinner table. But he’d avoided being in any other common room she might occupy.
Which wasn’t to say he hadn’t heard her laughing and flirting up a storm with the AAE boys. The chick was a freaking magnetar—a powerful force drawing anything that even approached her orbit. Hell, she’d even gotten the honeymoon kids to occasionally come up for air and interact with her.
It wasn’t as if he’d assumed she wouldn’t be here today. She was actually pretty attentive to her cousin’s needs—he’d give her that—so he’d figured she might bring Janna to Tyler’s game. But he sure as hell hadn’t expected to find Grace sharing a blanket with her.
As if she could read his thoughts, the brunette schoolteacher turned to him and smiled. “Isn’t this fun?”
“Yeah. Great. I sort of expected to spend the time with just you, but either way, it’s good to have some time together.”
“This is like an unexpected party, though, don’t you think? Did I tell you what Macy said about her nephew Tyler having me as his teacher this fall?”
“I don’t think the kid is actually her nephew.” Okay, he was being a boor, but he couldn’t seem to help it. He’d been looking forward to having a relaxing hour or two with Grace and here Macy was. Butting in. Getting in the way of his absorbing some of the teacher’s serenity. Making his heart rate spike.
“Oh, I know,” Grace agreed in her sweet-natured way. “I guess he’d be her second cousin. Still, that’s what she calls him. And apparently he calls her Aunt. Anyway—” She launched into a tale of what-Macy-said.
The woman under discussion suddenly shrieked Tyler’s name and shot up onto her knees. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” she and Janna, who’d leaned forward in her chair, chanted with almost perfect synchronism.
Gabe’s gaze flew to the field and homed in on Ty, and he sat up with a jerk. Number eleven on the visiting team had hit a long pop-up and was racing for first base, slinging his bat to the side as he ran. Ty, his eyes narrowed in fierce concentration, had his hands overhead, his mitt cupped toward the descending ball, as he backpedaled…danced several steps to the left…then corrected by taking a short step back toward center. He was positioned under the ball when it came down, hit the tip of his mitt, balanced for one breathless moment—
Then bobbled over the edge and fell into the space between his raised arms and his body.
“Nooooooo,” Janna and Macy groaned.
Tyler slapped his mitt and free hand at his narrow little chest, his stomach, his groin, his thighs, hunching in on himself as he chased the ball rolling down his torso. Then he suddenly straightened.
And held the ball high.
“Oh, my,” Grace whispered as Janna, Macy and Shannon screamed their approval along with several parents on the bleachers. Macy executed an impromptu little upper-body dance, then exchanged high fives with her cousin and Shannon. Knee-walking around the big redhead, she held out her hand in low-five position to Grace. “Gimme fiiive.”
Grace laughed and slapped palms, then Macy leaned around her to offer the same to him.
He saw the instant she thought better of the idea, but he knew that for once this had nothing to do with that playful, sexually aware teasing she excelled at. This was sheer exuberance over Ty’s triumph—and he reached out to slap hands.
Hers was supple and cool, and instead of giving it the quick spank-and-snatch he’d intended, he executed the former but found his fingers developing a life of their own as they slid slowly away, brushing from her palm to her fingertips. The contrast between the hard-edged Goth look she sported today and the softness of her skin made his brows furrow, and when her eyes widened and she curled her fingers in as if to hang on to the same sensation sparking in him, he dropped back onto his elbows. He couldn’t figure her out at all.
It was almost a relief when some guy showed up a short while later and Macy started flirting with him, sliding effortlessly back into a niche Gabe understood.
At least it was for a while. Then the verbal slap and tickle between the two started getting on his nerves. Sitting up again, he leaned around Grace to look at the guy squatting in front of Macy. “I don’t think we’ve met,” he said. “I’m Gabe Donovan.”
The guy barely spared him a glance. “Adam Westler. My son, Zach, plays on the team.”
“No kidding? Huh. I stop by pretty often to catch at least part of the games. I don’t remember ever seeing you here before.”
The man shrugged. “Guy’s gotta work.”
But apparently not once word got out that Macy O’James is in town.
Before he could make an issue of it, however—or even figure out why he would want to—Lenore and Bud arrived, carrying folding camp chairs. “Sorry we’re late,” the older lady said cheerfully. “Bud insisted on weeding the vegetable garden, then didn’t want to leave the job half-done.”
“In this heat?” Macy demanded, jumping to her feet and taking the chair from her aunt. She unfolded it and set it on the other side of Gabe while Bud set up his own next to it. For a moment, Gabe was as mesmerized as a pubescent boy by the straight shot up her yard-long legs to a glimpse of schoolgirl-white panties that his position on the ground afforded him.
Then, he gave himself a mental head slap and looked away. What was he, twelve?
“Auntie,” he heard Macy say with a low-voiced intensity that snapped his gaze to her face. “Didn’t you receive the check I sent last month? You were supposed to hire some help with it.”
“Oh, we put that away for a rainy day. Along with all the others you’ve sent.” Reaching out, she patted Macy’s hand. “Don’t fret, sweetheart. Your uncle’s been gardening since he was old enough to pick up a hoe. Pulling a few weeds in the heat’s not gonna do him in.”
“Me big strong man,” Bud agreed with a grin.
“I know you are,” Macy circled her aunt and stooped to plant a kiss on his bald, sun-spotted head. “The biggest, strongest man it’s my privilege to know. I just don’t want you overdoing.”
“Not gonna happen, baby girl. So, how’s the game gone so far?”
“Oh!” Her face alight with enthusiasm, she turned to her cousin. “Janna! Tell your folks about Ty’s fly ball.”
The Sentinels ended up losing by two points, but Tyler and Charlie were so pumped over Ty’s save that the loss didn’t seem to faze them. With great drama and exaggerated staggering, they performed a reenactment of the play.
Laughing at their antics, Lenore said, “Well, this is just too much fun to break up. I think everyone should come back to the boardinghouse and have dinner with us. Call your husband, Shannon, and tell him to grab Amy and come on over.” She turned to Westler and looked pointedly at the pale band of white Gabe hadn’t even noticed encircling the other man’s ring finger. “And your wife is welcome, too, of course.”
Westler gave her a wry smile. “I’m divorced, ma’am. That’s my ex over there with my son, Zach.” He indicated a plump, sandy-haired woman stepping off the bottom riser of the bleachers and reaching out to haul a dejected-looking kid into her arms for a hug.
“Then I guess you’ll have to come on your own. Or maybe Zach would like to join us.”
“He’s pretty mad at me over the divorce right now, so I doubt it. But let me go ask.”
Watching the interaction between father and son at the far end of the bleachers, Gabe didn’t need to hear their exchange to know Westler would be joining them stag. The sullen expression on the kid’s face said it all.
He blew out a quiet, irritated breath. Great. That’s what they needed around the dinner table tonight, another contender for the always-happenin’ Flirt-a-rama.
But Grace was clearly pleased by the prospect of the get-together continuing. So, sucking it up, he rose and extended a hand to pull her to her feet.
“DIDN’T YOU DATE my niece one time in high school?” Bud suddenly asked Adam over Lenore’s taco salad and homemade rolls.
Damn, Macy thought at the same time Adam agreed, “I did.”
Fork suspended halfway to his mouth, her uncle gave the younger man a level stare and demanded in a low voice, “You one of those fools who took her out because you believed Mayfield’s lies?” Damn, damn, damn. Her heart sank as Gabe’s head snapped around from his tête-à-tête with Grace on the other side of Bud.
Color bloomed in Adam’s cheeks. “Uh—”
“How’s he supposed to answer that, Uncle Bud?” she demanded in a voice as quiet as her uncle’s had been. Turning to the Experimental boys, she said in a more conversational tone, “I’m not sure if Adam mentioned this, but he works at AAE.” She gave the American Agricultural Experiment, which most folks in Sugarville simply called the Experimental, its proper acronym. “Have any of you had a chance to work with him yet?”
Jim Holstrom said that he had, which started the conversational ball rolling when the remaining Experimental grant holders told Adam where they were currently studying within the project. Ignoring the intent gaze that Gabriel was drilling into her temporal lobe, Macy rearranged her salad on her plate. She hated that her aunt and uncle knew about that time in her life. She’d done her best to keep them from learning of it, but somehow they’d found out anyway. They’d never said exactly how.
The whole screwed-up mess had started because she’d forgotten the first rule of self-preservation. Growing up, she’d been dragged from pillar to post by her mother, the queen of Moving On. Macy had been the perpetual new kid in school—all twenty-three of them—and was savvy about not setting herself up for disappointment. She simply avoided getting attached to anyone, because she knew that sooner rather than later, Mom would get that restless look in her eye again and Macy would be shaken awake in the dead of night or greeted at the door when she came in from school by her mother’s gratingly cheerful, “Pack your bags, kiddo. We’re off on a big adventure.” It wasn’t until she’d hit high school age and Auntie Lenore talked her mom into letting her stay with them that she’d spent an entire year at one school.
