Looking for Trouble (Jackson: Girls' Night Out 1)

Sophie had managed to avoid the picture last time around, but this time she found herself staring at the grainy black-and-white photo of the crumpled truck nearly hidden by tall grasses and trees.

Had her mom died on impact? The truck had tumbled seventy-five feet before coming to rest nearly upright. Had she been unconscious, at least? Or had she lain there awake and dying for days?

Goose bumps rose on Sophie’s arms and spread over her whole body, then deep inside until she shuddered.

Sophie would never know. No one ever would. And no one would ever know what had caused it. Her brother had brought all this back to the surface for no goddamn reason at all, except money. Money. He didn’t even work for a living. He thought because of one tragedy in his life, he deserved to get everything easy.

She scowled at the page. She’d pay a million dollars for it all to go away. How could he have done this?

The article wrapped up with a paragraph about the dedication on Saturday at the Providence historical site. Sophie was skimming the ending when the bomb dropped, setting off an explosion in her chest. A quote from Rose Bishop. “After everything my sons and I have gone through, I finally thought we’d get some closure. This lawsuit is a violation of my family’s suffering. Clearly, no one in the Heyer family has any shame. They never have.”

God, the reporter must have salivated over that. It wasn’t often that feuds were laid out so gleefully for public consumption. And this one had everything. Sex, death, one of the f

ounding families of Jackson, and now, money.

Sophie looked at the photo one more time. Her mom had lain in that truck for over two decades. She’d been lost. Forgotten. She still was, her ashes sitting on a shelf in a closet of the funeral home. Sophie didn’t want to bring her home.

She refolded the paper, carefully moving the front section to the back and stacking the lifestyle section on top. Then she went to the kitchen, plated two cinnamon rolls, and curled back up on the couch to eat them both. They stopped the burning in her stomach, but she still had to swipe tears off her cheeks while she ate. The kitten slept on, too wrapped up in the scent of Alex to care what Sophie was up to, but Sophie didn’t mind. She’d do the same if she could. In fact, she hoped to do exactly that tonight.

She just didn’t want to think about this anymore. She didn’t want to go to work and be asked about it, and she didn’t want to be around people who were pretending not to know. She didn’t want people looking at her, recognizing her, watching to see what happened. She didn’t want to run into Rose again. She didn’t want to pick up her mom’s ashes. She didn’t want to grab her little brother and shake him until his ears rang. She just wanted it to stop.

All of it.

Alex was right. She should leave. Walk away from everything like he had. Let these damaged people fight it out amongst themselves for eternity while she flew free.

But just the thought made her cry so hard she had to set the plate down and curl up into a pillow. She couldn’t walk away from her family like that. She was the only one her dad could depend on. If he were fifty, maybe that would be okay, but he was slowing down. He needed help, and her brother showed no signs of growing up and carrying part of the load. She couldn’t just leave.

The only solution she could come up with in that moment was to lie there and feel sorry for herself, so that was what she did. She sniffled. She clenched her eyes shut. She cried a little more. When that got boring, she reached out and swiped some frosting off the plate and licked her fingers.

It turned out that wallowing in self-pity was kind of boring. And there were so many people who had bigger problems than she did. Real problems. Sick kids. Foreclosed mortgages. Terrible injuries from wars. Really, she was just being a big baby.

She sat up and stared blindly at the paper sitting in front of her. As her energy returned, she slipped the next section free of the paper to read the local advice column. Dear Veronica was her favorite part of the paper. It was selfish, maybe, but Sophie liked knowing that other people in town had secrets and problems, too.

Still, she stared blindly for a moment at the advice section, too tired to even focus. Then her swollen eyes cleared, and unfortunately she wasn’t staring blindly anymore. Her eyes had focused right on the bolded headline: Vixen Has Her Claws in My Son.

“Nope,” Sophie said aloud. It wasn’t about her. It was some other vixen with her claws in some woman’s poor, unsuspecting son. Sophie wasn’t the only slut in town, surely.

Dear Veronica,

My son just came back to town after many years away. As you can imagine, I’m overjoyed to be reconciled with him.

Jackson has a fairly fluid population, Sophie told herself. People come and go.

The problem is that as soon as he set foot in town, the neighborhood floozy set her sights on him.

There were several neighborhoods in the Jackson area. And probably several floozies. It absolutely wasn’t her.

He’s a man, so I can’t expect him to see past her harmless facade when she’s offering free sex.

Harmless facade. She glanced down at her cardigan.

How do I get rid of her? I just got him back and I don’t want to cause another rift, but this little tramp will ruin his life!

Signed,

There’s a Strumpet on My Street

Yeah. Shit. It was definitely about Sophie.