Plain Jayne (34 page)

“Jayne?”

She needed to get a grip—and fast—or this was going to go from agonizing to beyond excruciating. She was the one who’d told Ellie the only thing that mattered was keeping Nick in her life, however she could get him.

Well, apparently, she was getting him as a brother.

“You okay?” Nick asked.

Breathe, Jayne
.

“I’m fine,” she croaked. “Can we please just talk about something else?”

Smile. There you go. Good.

“But—”

“I swear to God, Nick …”

“Okay, okay.” His jaw tightened in that way that told her he wasn’t done with this conversation. Too bad, because she was good and done with it. In fact, she was counting the minutes until he left on his stupid trip so she could catch her breath, maybe remember how to live without him in her life every single minute.

Neither one of them moved. It was all Jayne could do to force air in and out of her lungs; the idea of standing was too much to even consider at that moment. God only knew why Nick didn’t get up off the floor.

“How’s Maya?” he finally asked.

Yes. Good. Talk about someone else’s problems.

“Miserable.”

Nick cringed. “What’s she going to do?”

“She’s going to stay here until we can figure something out.”

“Here?” he gaped. “There’s barely room upstairs for one person, never mind two.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she shrugged. “She’s not going back to him, and if it means I sleep on the couch until we find her a place, then that’s what I’ll do. She’d do the same for me.”

Jayne swallowed hard. It wasn’t so long ago she’d been in Maya’s place; the humiliation had been overwhelming, in part because Barry hadn’t even tried hard to hide things, and because he knew Jayne would blame herself, which she did, just as Maya was doing now. But Jayne would be damned if she’d let Maya go another day feeling powerless in her own life.

After another couple minutes, Nick pushed to his feet and held out his hand for Jayne. Still shaky, she let him help her up, praying her legs held.

“Are we good?” he asked, still holding her hand, still smiling down at her.

She sighed over a half shrug, half nod. “I’m still going out with Brett tomorrow night.”

His smile dropped, his jaw like rock. “Can I just tell you—”

“No, you can’t.” She jerked the door open and gestured for him to go. “You’ve done a lot for me, Nick, but that doesn’t give you any right to make decisions for me or to tell me who I can and can’t go out with.”

“I just—”

“Good night.” With a not-so-gentle push, she shoved him out the door and locked it behind him.

How long did she stand there after he left? She had no idea; the only thing she knew for certain was she was going to drop any second, and it was a hell of a long way to the back of the store and up those thirteen stairs.

She grabbed her mug and the stack of mail and began the trek up to the sofa. As she hit the top step, Maya came out of the bathroom, looking as crappy as Jayne felt.

“What a pair we are,” Maya chuckled, but there wasn’t an ounce of humor in it.

They made their way over to the couch and flopped down on it.

Jayne took Maya’s hand and squeezed it. “Sorry if we woke you.”

“Bah,” she smiled feebly. “Sleep’s overrated.”

“Agreed. Why sleep when we can sit here staring at the wall?”

Maya reached for the remote on the table and flicked the TV on. “You never know what old movies they’re going to show in the middle of the night.”

“Right.” As Maya flicked channels, Jayne started opening the mail. Phone bill, power bill, and a note from Dr. Woodrow Reimer, DDA, to remind Gran that she was due for her semiannual dental cleaning.

Way to keep on top of things, Doc.

She ripped open the last envelope and pulled out the folded paper. A small key was taped to the bottom of the page, a letter from Gran’s lawyer.

“Are you freakin’ kidding me?”

“What?” Maya looked up.

Jayne shook her head in utter disbelief. “There’s more. Gran had more crap.”

“What?”
Maya repeated. “Where?”

“In a storage locker! Can you believe that? And now they’re telling me she was only going to ‘give’ it to me if I decided to open the store again. Like she’s doing me such a huge favor by dumping more piles of crap on me.”

She flipped the letter over so Maya could read it, then slumped down on the sofa and propped her feet on the table. Screw it. Whatever was in there could damn well go for auction. Anyone stupid enough to bid on a locker full of plastic Santas and ratty old baby clothes deserved what they got.

Jayne and Maya waited until they knew Will had gone to work before they went to Maya’s house. While Jayne dealt with the easy things like clothes and toiletries, Maya wandered around the house gathering personal things she wanted.

Sadly, there wasn’t much.

The three-bedroom house sat on a quiet street a couple minutes past Nick’s house in one of the older subdivisions. The yard was neatly kept, with bursts of color in the weedless gardens and the grass an even green. Inside was exactly how Jayne had imagined.

The walls were a soft tan color, just barely darker than off-white, and each room had accents to complement the color. It was almost too perfect; even the spare bedrooms were perfectly arranged with green throw pillows set at perfect angles and not a single footprint marring the vacuum lines in the carpet.

A glass vase of pink roses sat on a corner of the coffee table in the living room, directly behind a framed photo of Maya and Will all decked out in their wedding finery. To see their faces in that photo, a person would never guess where they’d be a year later.

Jayne gave Maya a quick squeeze. “Do you want the TV? Or what about the computer?”

“No,” she murmured, then walked straight toward the computer she said she didn’t want. She copied a whole bunch of things to a flash drive, deleted everything that was hers from the hard drive, and then disabled the antivirus software.

“He never checks that,” she said, smiling. “So if there’s any justice in this world, he will soon find himself overrun with every virus out there, personally and technologically speaking. May his computer crash and his dick fall off.”

Jayne snorted, laughed, and held up her hand. “High five on that one, sister!”

They were at the door when Maya stopped.

“Hang on.”

“But you’re going to be late getting the store open.” Jayne tapped her watch for emphasis.

“This won’t take long.”

“Okay.” At first, Jayne stayed at the door, but when the first crash boomed from the kitchen, she raced after Maya. By the time she got there, an entire stack of plates lay in pieces across the tile floor.

“Maya!” If Jayne hadn’t ducked, the projectile glass would have hit her in the head. “Stop! What are you doing?”

Maya didn’t stop; in fact, she seemed to be just warming up.

“He always told me the dishes were mine to do, so guess what? I’m doing them!” With the look of a crazed lunatic, Maya moved from cupboard to cupboard, shoving everything onto the floor. Glasses shattered, dishes broke, and cutlery flew everywhere. Then she moved on to the fridge.

She lifted a full jar of pickles and tossed them over her shoulder. “Oops. I hate when that happens.”

Eggs went in twelve different directions, then jam, a whole tub of butter, ketchup, and milk. It went on and on until every last thing in the fridge and cupboards was now splattered all over the kitchen floor in a giant lake of yuck. Jayne watched in both shock and awe, then followed Maya’s gooey footsteps out of the kitchen and back upstairs.

“We should go.”

“It’ll just take a minute.” She lifted the edge of the sheets and felt around the mattress. A slow wave rippled across the bed.

“You have a water bed?” Jayne gasped.

“He thinks it’s the best thing in the world.” Maya frowned, shoved the sheet back farther until she found what she was looking for. Without a moment’s hesitation, she pulled the cap and plug out, then set them back, just barely, inside the opening.

“Maya,” Jayne warned, and was promptly ignored. “You can’t do this.”

“Of course I can.” Maya pulled the sheets back to where they were before and stood scanning the room, looking for something, but what? Jayne shuddered to think. “I’ve told him over and over again that the plug didn’t seal properly. I was forever tightening it, but without me here to do it, who knows what will happen?”

With a sudden grin, she grabbed a couple big empty suitcases from the closet and tossed them on the bed. “That should do. Let’s go.”

Jayne chased after her. “You’re not seriously going to leave it like this? You’ll be arrested!”

“For what?” Maya laughed. “It’s my stuff, I can do whatever the hell I want to it. Besides, he always comes home for lunch, so it’s not like the place’ll be floating by then, it’ll just be a little wet.”

“A little wet? Maya!”

They almost made it to the front door before Maya took a sharp right into the laundry room and came out with a shiny new Wilson nine iron.

“I gave him this the morning of our anniversary,” she said. “But he told me he only used Titleist, so I was going to return it. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to swing one.”

“Maya,” Jayne cried, chasing her into the living room. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” she asked with a giant smile. “Don’t play golf in the house? No, I wouldn’t do that. I’ve never understood the whole golf thing, but baseball … now there’s a sport I can get behind.”

She wrapped both hands around the handle, adjusted her grip a little, then lifted it back behind her right shoulder. She hesitated for less time than it took her to inhale, then brought it around like she was Babe Ruth shooting for the bleachers. The plasma screen exploded, sending bits blasting everywhere, but Maya wasn’t done. Next, she took aim at every framed photograph in the room, a crystal vase that split into chunks, one of which ended up embedded in the wall, and then just for good measure, she went back to the computer and slammed the head of the club through the monitor.

“Okay.” She rubbed her hands down her jeans and nodded, giving the house one last look before finally walking out the door.

Jayne scrambled into the car, looking around wildly to see if anyone was watching. To see Maya, you’d never guess such a sweet little thing would wreak such havoc in her own house, especially when she was driving away looking as cool as a cucumber.

“I can’t believe you did that.”

“He was screwing his whore in my house, Jayne.
In my bed!
Would you have just left without doing something? Oh, I don’t think so.”

Jayne didn’t answer because that’s exactly what she’d done with Barry. Boy, did he get off easy.

After promising to call her later, Maya dropped Jayne at the apartment, then went to her flower store whistling “Tequila.” It took Jayne three tries to get the back door unlocked because of the way her hands shook. Good God, had she just aided a crime? And if so, how could she possibly sit across from Brett tonight and not look guilty?

The whole thing was so ridiculous, she couldn’t help but laugh. A couple times she almost felt bad for Will, who had no idea what his house had just gone through, but those moments didn’t last long. He deserved it. And more.

All day, every time she thought of little Maya swinging the nine iron through the plasma screen, she laughed again, and then reminded herself to never piss that woman off.

By late afternoon, she found herself rereading the letter from the lawyer. Something seemed off. She lifted the key from under the tape and stared at it; what could possibly be in that locker? After all the crap they’d hauled out of here, the thought of doing more was too much.

She turned the key over in her hand, then reached for the letter again.

On her specific instruction, you were to receive this key only if you reopened the bookstore.

Only if she reopened the store? What the hell? Was it supposed to be some kind of weird bribe? Why the hell would Gran care if she reopened the store or not? The old bat had closed it up years ago and done God knows what with the stock.

Jayne stared down at the letter again. No way. Was Gran really that crazy?

With the key stuffed in her pocket, Jayne left everything else on the kitchen counter, locked up, and ran all the way to Lakeside Storage. Once there, it didn’t take her long to find the locker, but it took her a good five minutes to actually work up the nerve to put the key in the lock.

She could do this.

If the books were in there, she needed to get them out. If it was just more crap, she’d simply lock the door and walk away; the lawyers or the facility management could deal with it. Hell, they could burn it for all she cared.

She released the lock and unclipped it from the hasp, then grabbed the door handle near
the ground with both hands and hauled it up until it grabbed and rolled up toward the ceiling.

“No freakin’ way.” Jayne’s mouth fell open, her throat went bone dry, and she couldn’t even blink. In fact, she was afraid to blink in case this was some kind of mirage and by blinking, she’d lose sight of it.

Six evenly spaced rows of identical boxes, stacked five high and fifteen or twenty deep. Each box was labeled in Gran’s precise handwriting, but it took Jayne another minute to realize what she was reading.