I Want Candy (7 page)

“Oh.” Candy sat up on the couch, slipped into her flip-flops, and tiptoed across her mother’s sitting room to the door. “Hold on a sec.” As silently as possible, she unlocked the dead bolt and crept into the hallway. It was nine-fifteen and the place was silent as a tomb. “Yeah, about that,” she said, leaning against the wall and sliding down until her butt hit the carpet. “It’s kind of a weird story, actually.”

“Where are you?”

“At Jacinta’s place,” she whispered. “Believe it or not.”

“Not,” Cheri said. “But I’ll get to that in a minute—why are you whispering?”

“Because she said ‘no late-night phone calls’ and I’m sitting out in the hallway.”

Cheri paused. “It’s nine-fifteen.”

“Around here, that’s the middle of the freakin’ night.”

“Right. So what did she say about the nest egg?”

Candy gulped, not looking forward to sharing the details of that unpleasant conversation, even with Cheri. She wasn’t entirely sure which part was more painful—the part where her mother told her she never expected to get the money back in the first place or the part where she accused Candy of being incapable of staying put long enough to be successful at anything.

“It took you three colleges to get one degree,” she pointed out. “You’ve started and ended a dozen businesses over the years. And Lord knows how many boyfriends you’ve run through that were never quite good enough to marry.”

“I sold many of them, actually,” Candy said by way of clarification.

Jacinta looked horrified.

“My businesses, Mother. In the last eleven years, I’ve sold eight businesses for a profit, and I always rolled it over into the next venture. It’s called ‘enterprise.’”

Her mother had pursed her lips. “Yet here you are, your enterprising ass on my couch and your possessions in a cardboard box. Obviously, something ain’t right.”

Candy looked up and down the hall again to ensure there were no eavesdroppers before she answered Cheri. “Jacinta wasn’t thrilled, but she wasn’t surprised. She took the opportunity to lecture me about my lack of stick-to-itiveness.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

Candy shrugged. “It’s the price I gotta pay if I want to crash here. But I can only stay two weeks—it’s in the resident bylaws.”

“I saw a
HELP WANTED
sign in the window at Lenny’s Diner today.”

“Seriously?”

“Keep your voice down or I’ll report you to Mr. Miller!”

Candy nearly jumped at the sharp command coming from her right. She glanced up to see Lorraine Estes stick her pink sponge-rollered head from her open door. Candy had no idea her mother’s archenemy in man-chasing also happened to be her next-door neighbor.

The plot was thickening.

“You shouldn’t be here in the first place,” Lorraine added. “This here is a high-end place, not a flophouse. And what you did with your mother’s nest egg is a sin! Shame on you!”

Candy rolled her eyes, pushed herself up from the carpeted hallway, and headed out toward the front lobby. “Hold on again, Cheri,” she said, noting that Gerrall was watching some action-hero movie on his laptop at the front desk. She waved at him and pointed to her cell phone. “I’m going to take this call outside.”

“I’ll buzz you back in,” he said with a smile.

“Now tell me about Turner.”

Candy sighed, settling onto a bench near one of the white-pebbled walking paths, stalling, wondering how she would be able to avoid mentioning that she shoved her twins in Turner’s face. In retrospect, it had been a stunningly bad decision. “Uh, what exactly have you heard?” she asked.

“J.J. told me the whole story, including the part where you flashed your boobs at the sheriff,” Cheri said matter-of-factly. “That was just before you reached up and grabbed his cheeks and kissed him. Now, would you mind telling me what I’m missing here? Because I had no idea you’ve been harboring lust for Turner Halliday all these years.”

Candy laughed. “That’s because I haven’t! I mean, I didn’t
know
I was. Do you know what I mean?”

“No, I do not.”

That hadn’t come out right.

“You’re telling me you’re hot for Halliday?” Cheri’s voice squealed a little.

“No. Yes. I know I shouldn’t be. Would it be a problem if I were?”

Cheri laughed. “The only problem is that I was the last to know!”

“Sorry.” She propped her forehead in her palm and sighed again. She felt like an insane person—a homeless insane person. “I swear I would’ve given you a heads-up if I’d been aware of it myself, but it just kind of hit me. I looked up and there he was and it was like I was on autopilot.”

“Just like that?” Cheri asked. “You pulled out one set of headlights because you forgot to turn on the other?”

“I didn’t even know it was Turner at first.”

“So it was a
random
flashing event.”

Candy groaned. “Fine. I deserve this. I should have told you as soon as it happened, but I guess I was just embarrassed. Forgive me.”

“Forgiven,” Cheri said. “So.”

“So,” Candy replied.

“J.J. says that Turner really enjoyed the kiss. In fact, J.J. thinks Turner likes you.”

Candy sat ramrod straight on the bench. “What, are we suddenly in seventh grade again?”

Cheri laughed loud and long. Truly, it was a beautiful sound and Candy couldn’t help but join in. How could she not be thrilled that her friend was so outrageously happy? It had only taken Cheri a month to figure out she’d always loved J.J. and was destined to be the newest Newberry to serve as publisher of the
Bugle
. If Candy envied Cheri anything, it was how simple and straightforward the transition to happiness had been for her.

Their laughter eventually died down. That’s when Candy was suddenly hit with an appreciation for just how ridiculous her situation was. Last year at this time, her biggest dilemma was deciding whether to straighten her curls with a Brazilian blowout. And tonight she was freeloading in a retirement home, nine dollars and eleven cents in her pocket, talking on a cell phone that Cheri had paid for.

The instant Candy felt the tear hit her cheek, she wiped it away.

“How did we get here, Cheri?” she asked, her voice suddenly heavy with sadness. She knew her friend understood what she was asking, no matter how abrupt the subject change had been. And she knew Cheri didn’t mind answering her, no matter that they’d had this discussion a hundred times.

“We were on a roll, girl,” Cheri said with a sigh. “It was a thrill to buy and sell and watch our net worth skyrocket. We were smart and we acted decisively. It was like a game for us. It got to the point where it was easy to make money.”

“Too easy,” Candy said. She stood up and began to wander through the pines, her fingertips brushing against the cool, flexible needles. “It didn’t even seem real sometimes.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Like play money.”

“Yeah.”

“But we were good at it, weren’t we?”

“Damn good,” Cheri said.

“Then the rules changed, just like that.”

The two women were quiet for a moment, and the only sound was the crunch of Candy’s flip-flops on the pebbles and the chirping of nighttime bugs. She closed her eyes against the remembered pain of those awful months, where they could do nothing but watch as banks tanked, property values evaporated, and the market died on the vine. Candy heard the words burst from her lips before she even knew she planned to speak.

“I’m so sorry for my part in what happened,” she said. “I was always the one pushing for more, telling you about some new property we could flip or cookin’ up some deal. I know I can go off on a tangent sometimes, and I think my grand schemes—”

“That’s nuts and you know it.” Cheri cut her off. “We were a team. I made the numbers work and you had a knack for seeing the potential in properties. Whatever we did, we did together.”

“But the commercial deal—”

“Even that.”

Candy raked a hand through her hair and tilted her head back. The pines rose straight above her, piercing into the wispy night clouds and the stars beyond. She took a deep breath and wondered to herself once more—what would have happened if she hadn’t talked Cheri into moving from residential to commercial? If she hadn’t pushed to leverage their entire net worth on a single strip mall property? If she’d been satisfied with what they’d already acquired?

Sure, they would have suffered when the real estate bubble burst, like everyone else who owned property in southwestern Florida, but it wouldn’t have been total annihilation. Maybe they’d still have
something
left.

“I just … no.” Candy heard her voice break. “I think sometimes it’s my fault, that I got you into this mess.”

“Hey, Candy?”

“Yeah?”

“Everybody should be in the kind of mess I’m in.”

Candy sniffled. “I guess it turned out pretty good for you, didn’t it?”

“Uh,
yeah
.”

Candy began to laugh outright, and Cheri joined her, then said, “And it will work out for you, too. Just wait and see.”

She nodded in silence.

“Now is not the time to give up, babycakes.”

“I know.”

“You’re Candy Freakin’ Carmichael.”

She snorted with laughter. “Hell, yes, I am—currently residing at the Cherokee Pines Assisted Living facility, thank you very much.”

“Oh, Lord, girl…” Cheri said with a sigh. “Are you going to be okay tonight?”

“Of course. The couch is comfy. Tater got my car working again. I’ll go to Lenny’s tomorrow and see about that job.”

“I’m here. Always. I love you to death.”

Candy felt herself smile. That was one thing that had never wavered, regardless of the wheres and the whys and the hows of her life—she could always count on Cheri.

“I love you right back. Oh! And just one last thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Do not tell Turner where I am, okay? Don’t let J.J. tell him where I am, either. Let him assume I’m still at Viv’s. I need some space. I need to figure this out.”

“What if he asks?” Cheri sounded torn. “You want me to lie to him?”

“Ah, hell, I guess not. If he asks, tell him, but if he doesn’t ask, don’t bring it up.”

“If you say so,” Cheri said.

Candy ended the call and shoved her phone in her pocket, strolling toward the front door. She pulled on the handle but it was locked tight. Gerrall looked up from his laptop, grinned, and buzzed her in.

“You have a good night now,” he said. “It’s sure nice to have a new face around here—especially one as pretty as yours.”

“Thank you,” she said with as much politeness as she could muster, considering that Gerrall hadn’t been looking anywhere near her face when he’d said that.
Do not trust him …

Candy reached Jacinta’s apartment door and tried the knob. It, too, was locked tight.

“Shee-it,” she hissed. She gently tapped her knuckles on the varnished wood. No response. She knocked a little louder. “Jacinta?” she whispered, looking up and down the hallway. “Jacinta?
Mother?
Open up!”

“You know what they say—you can take the girl out of the trailer park…”

Candy slowly turned toward the voice. Once again, she encountered the neighbor lady’s pinched little face framed in the halo of pink sponge rollers, and just had to laugh.

“Lorraine, honey,” she said, “I’d freakin’
kill
for a trailer right about now.”

Jacinta flung open the door and glared spitefully at her neighbor. “Carmichaels do not live in trailer parks, you nosy old floozy!”

“I
never
!”

“That’s not what I heard!”

As Candy staggered through the door and back to the couch, she told herself that tomorrow was another day. As soon as she was horizontal, she pulled the blanket over her head.

*   *   *

Gerrall grabbed the duffel bag from the trunk and made his way across the junk-strewn grass to the barn. The light was spilling out from the cracks in the old sliding doors and he sniffed the air for the telltale tang of meth production. It was nearly two
A.M.
and they were still cooking in there, which meant they were behind on product, which meant his daddy would be mean as hell. With the new organization pushing them so hard, his daddy was worse than he could ever remember. Gerrall figured the best he could hope for that night would be to drop the shit on the worktable and get out before his daddy decided to beat him black and blue. Maybe he’d sleep in the old tree house instead of the trailer tonight, just to be on the safe side.

He pushed the door open a crack. Immediately, four sawed-off shotguns were aimed at his face. “It’s me,” he said, hearing the exhaustion in his own voice. He wondered how long it would be before one of these assholes started sampling the goods and got so jumpy they just shot his head off for the fun of it.

“Well, looky who it is!” His daddy grinned at Gerrall and ground out his cigarette in the dirt floor of the workroom.

The new cook screamed at him. “Fuck, Spivey! Stop your fucking smoking out here! How many times I gotta tell you this whole place and every one of us in it could blow up because of your fucking cigarettes!”

His daddy chuckled, then pulled out a handgun and pressed it into the cook’s temple. “Talk to me like that again and I’ll put a hole in your brain.”

Gerrall sighed. The cook looked like he was going to crap his pants. It was almost a done deal that this guy—who didn’t even have a name yet as far as he knew—would be gone in the morning and Gerrall would be looking for another college chemistry major dropout to run the shop. It wasn’t as easy as it sounded, since everybody and their uncle was trying to get in on the meth business out here. Anyone with a working knowledge of chemistry was a hot commodity.

Gerrall smiled to himself. If he were really, really lucky, he’d come home one night to find the barn blown to all hell and his daddy’s body parts scattered all over the property like pieces of confetti on Main Street at the Fourth of July parade. His daddy deserved it. He was a worthless human being and too damn stupid to live. Nobody would miss him. That was for sure.