Ask anyone in Hellon, Tennessee, about Rita Butcher Stark and they will tell you first about the tornado. They’ll tell you the other things, of course, like how she and that Stark boy—
nobody
calls me
that Stark boy
anymore, thank you very much—had to get married when they were seventeen. It never was much of a marriage, and no one was one bit surprised it didn’t last, but it did produce one mighty fine daughter. Our girl graduated a full year ahead of her high-school class and not without fanfare, I might add. Not to mention how her beauty and poise won her the coveted Miss Strawberry Belle crown.

Every girl—and just maybe a boy or two—in Hellon yearns to be Miss Strawberry Belle. Rita herself held the title when she was barely sixteen. A year later she took the Tristate Teen Dixie Belle
Duchess pageant by storm and won with ease.

Her talent nailed it for her. Rita sings like an earthbound angel mourning for heaven, a hell-hot temptress longing for love, and, bless her heart, Tennessee’s own Patsy Cline all rolled into one.

She could have gone a long way in the pageant circuit, a smart, pretty girl like Rita. She could have used the scholarships to fulfill her dreams of going off to college and taking on the world. But life (and our raging teenage hormones) gave her an unexpected spin. The next year she took on the title she has worked the hardest at, which suits her like a gold-and-crystal tiara complements big hair and high heels, and which she cherishes above the rest—Mom.

Mention Rita today and fellow Hellonites (Hellonese?) will use phrases like “salt of the earth,” “downright dependable,” “steadfast and loyal.” To the point of being almost immovable, I’d add. That woman’s goal in life seems to be nothing loftier than finding perspective and keeping her wheels between the ditches.

People around here would agree with me on
that
much, at least, and tell you so. But not a word of it will come your way until they lay the proper groundwork by telling you about that tornado.

That’s how it is if you live in a town with one zip code, a handful of places where you can eat
and
get gas (or so say their roadside signs), and just seventy miles of highway between you and the promised land of Memphis.

Somebody knows one or two good stories on
everybody who ever lived, loved, lied, lusted, or just laid over for more than twenty-four hours in this smudge on the back road. And everybody, even those just passing through, has heard about “The Tornado.”

It was her mama and daddy’s story, by all rights. Rita and I had already married and had the baby the year three separate funnels bore down on Hellon in the space of less than an hour.

The air was so charged up it prickled on the skin. The sky had gone dark as midnight in the middle of the afternoon. The funnels appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and hung low above the horizon. Two together fast and furious, then, just when you thought it was over, the last and most horrible cut loose on the town.

The next day, the phrase “They roared through like a freight train out of hell,” got repeated more times than a man could count. People who probably never heard the terms outside of professional wrestling on TV spoke of “mass mayhem” and “pandemonium.” Church was full to the rafters that next Sunday with grateful souls. No one was killed, and there was only superficial damage, except for Rita’s mama and daddy’s house.

For years after that awful day you could come across a bent piece of silverware or a perfectly preserved knickknack in the oddest places, forks of trees, the window ledge outside the bank building, in the middle of a farmer’s field. If you did, that object more than likely came from Tammy and Rydel Butcher’s home. Or the pile of
rubble that was left after the third and final tornado had done its worst.

Of course that’s just the lead-in to the good part, the part where everyone moves in a little closer, holds eye contact a little longer, and lowers their voices, like they’re letting you in on prime gossip. Because it isn’t the tornado that makes this story worth the retelling sixteen years later, it’s what happened next.

The story goes then that Tammy Alice Butcher took a long, thoughtful look at the wreckage that had been her home. Then she looked at the man who had been her husband for more than half her life. Then she looked at the debris again. Then at the man who had made a shambles of their wedding vows time and time again over the years.

Finally, she looked—one could only guess at this bit, but you can’t leave it out cause it makes the story—finally, she looked long and hard at what her life had been there in that two-bedroom ranch with that two-timing man. And damned if she didn’t up and walk away from it all.

Used her part of the insurance money to get a divorce and buy an RV. She took off to find herself and must still be looking to this very day, because she never has come back to Hellon. Rydel married the only one of his hootchie galfriends who’d have him and moved off to Birmingham. He died a few years later.

With them gone, the story just naturally got glommed onto Rita. It’s the first thing folks tell you about her, even if you only asked for direc
tions to Pernel’s Pig Rib Palace, the barbecue joint I ran for years before up and leaving it to her so I could pursue…other interests.

That tornado is why, they will tell you, she has let that place sit all spring and not done a thing about fixing it up or converting it to the kind of restaurant she is so capable of running.

It’s why they say she mopes around the apartment over the Palace, reading and singing into that portable karaoke machine of hers, speculation goes. That and cook up a storm—always adding “but it’s not like she needs the calories.” Yes, folks around Hellon use that tornado story to rationalize everything about Rita from her failure to find wedded bliss to her weight.

Pleasingly plump is the way I look at her. Big and beautiful are the words her friend, Cozette Harvey, would proclaim. Cozette is on the big-boned side herself and prone to the dramatic.

“Cute as a ladybug’s ear but built with a Volkswagen Bug’s rear,” is what her other closest gal pal, Jillie West, has been known to say—and right to Rita’s face, no less. Though you can’t go by Jillie, as she’s the original stick-figure girl. She thinks a healthy woman’s body with shape and curves and jiggle rates the triple “S”—shame, starvation, and Spandex undergarments. Having experienced all three, I wouldn’t recommend a one of them.

Rita’s unlikely relationships get attributed to the whole tornado aftermath, too. Why else could anyone as good and decent as Rita stay hooked
up to an earth-mother type who don’t know the summer of love is over and a self-absorbed wild child from a family who takes excess to an extreme, even for moneyed Southern folks?

Knowing all that, you can understand, of course, why the real trouble began when Cozette and Jillie decided that what Rita needed to stir her out of her recent bout of complacency was her very own, heart-pumping, knees-a-knocking, life-as-she-knew-it-was-uh-oh-over…tornado!

You see, her mother’s lifestyle might have been turned upside down by that awful ill wind, but it was Rita’s life that has been defined by it. Seems all Rita’s choices stem directly from that moment when her mama up and left.

Those choices have kept her rooted and rigid. But take it from me, there’s a turbulence just under the surface of Rita Butcher Stark. Others see it, too, and we are watching her and waiting. Waiting for that day when she finally steps out of the shelter she’s made of her life and soars.

Chapter 1

E
VERY
D
IXIE
B
ELLE
K
NOWS
:

When loved ones overstep bounds or your ego needs a little oomph nothing flat out puts the frosting on the cake and says you mean business like a four-inch-high glittering headpiece of gold and rhinestone.

“No, no, no, no,
no
.” Rita pushed past Jillie. They were standing in the kitchenette—kitchen-
not
was more like it—but it was all the cramped apartment over Pernel’s Pig Rib Palace had to offer.

“What are you trying to tell us, sugar?” Cozette’s words dripped like honey from her smiling lips, but her eyes shimmered with tart mischief.

Rita went on tiptoe to reach to the back corner of her top cupboard and hauled out a big red-and-white mixing bowl. She clunked it down on the table. “I’m saying no. No, no, and no.” Cozette and Jillie exchanged disbelieving glances.

Rita huffed and reached inside the bowl to fish out the dazzling object she kept hidden there. Gently, she placed it on her head. Then she grabbed up her best wooden spoon and pointed it directly at Cozie, who had sprawled her long
body over the sagging green couch in the other half of the room. “And in case you think that’s the least bit ambiguous, let me say it again. No!”

“You know when she says it like that?” Jillie leaned back against the baby blue fridge, ruffling the clippings and photos of Rita’s daughter covering the door. “You can almost believe she means what she’s saying.”

“It’s that…that…thing on her head,” Cozie said.

Rita touched the Dixie Belle Duchess crown she had just perched precariously over what she felt sure was an adorably messy topknot. She’d seen a lot of years and a lot of pounds since it was first placed on her head. She didn’t put the thing on every day—not
every
day. But it still held magic for her. Wearing it, even as a gesture of pure smart-assness for her friends, never failed to remind her that she still had dreams and life still held possibilities.

Besides in times like these, when loved ones overstepped their bounds nothing flat-out puts the frosting on the cake and said she meant business like this four-inch-high glittering headpiece of gold and rhinestones.

“That crown and the way she waves that spoon around.” Cozie twirled her hand in the air. “Gives her the illusion of authority.”

“It gives her the illusion of insanity.”

“That’s no illusion.” Rita tugged at the strings of the old hospital gown she wore as a light-
weight robe. “My so-called friends have driven me stark raving mad.”

“Then our work is done.” Cozie rolled her eyes.

“Oh, no.” Jillie wagged a manicured finger. “Our work here has not even
begun
.”

“Heaven help me!” Rita hiked her sagging pajama pants up by the broken elastic waistband. “How could I be this big a peanut brain? Stupid, stupid!”

“Don’t talk like that, Rita!” Cozette sat bolt upright, her long black braid flipping down to rest on the soft slope of her breast. “The things you repeat to yourself silently and outwardly to the world become your reality. If you want to change your reality, you have to change the way you speak to and about yourself.”

“That
is
my reality.” Rita shook her head.

“Stop it,” Cozie demanded.

“Rita, really…”

“Well, I must be thicker than molasses in January, right?” She wiped the mixing bowl out with a soft cotton hand towel. “Here I am, a grown woman who doesn’t know whom to trust and believe in anymore.”

Even Cozie didn’t dare deny that one.

“Who, according to you two, cannot figure out how to get her life back on its safe, reasonable track without your intervention.”

Jillie had the good form to look sheepish.

“And most importantly someone who, despite
far too many intrusions by well-intentioned friends, has still not learned to keep the door leading from the restaurant to my apartment locked if I want to be left alone.”

“Being left alone is the worst thing that could happen to you, Rita.” Jillie spoke with a conviction that told more of her own fears than of her concern for her friend.

“Well, I don’t know about the
worst
.” Cozie’s warm maternal expression changed as she looked from Jillie to Rita and narrowed her eyes. “But it certainly is the least likely.”

Rita thought of throwing a house shoe at her, but the way this day had begun she’d probably hit her friend smack in the head. Then Rita would feel sorry and need to fix things, to put any bad feelings right before they threw the friendship off-balance. Then Cozette would start with the touchy-feely stuff about only having the power to forgive yourself and the need to embrace life where you are at while you can.

And then Rita would have to kill her.

Rita clucked her tongue.

“How a fiftysomething woman who only wears scratchy, voluminous, hand-loomed clothes and has not shaved her legs or armpits for twenty years could pull off an attitude worthy of one of Miss Peggy West’s country-club cronies, I cannot understand.”

“You don’t
shave
?” Jillie paled.

“We’re not talking about me, here, we’re talk
ing about Rita.” Cozie shifted her weight and visibly sank a little lower into the sad old sofa.

“Sorry, were we talking about me?” Rita pointed the spoon at her chest. “I thought we were talking about you two and your hare-brained idea to barge into my life and run roughshod over my careful, considered plans.”

Rita grabbed the handle of the refrigerator door.

“What plans?” Jillie stepped out of Rita’s way. “You don’t have any plans.”

Rita took out a carton of eggs and set them on the table by the large mixing bowl, humming nothing in particular.

“If you had any plans at all, Cozette and I never would have been driven to such…” Jillie attempted to push the refrigerator door shut with her entirely-inadequate-for-the-job backside. “Stop that humming and what do you think you’re doing?”

“Cooking breakfast.” Rita came to the rescue and sent the fridge door swinging shut with one well-aimed hip. “Cooking is my therapy. It’s my calm in the storm, my eye in the middle of the hurricane.”

“You don’t have time for that now. Tell her, Cozette.”

“We don’t have time for breakfast or hurricanes, Rita.”

“Don’t you tell me what I have time for. That’s not your place.” The shell made a delicate crackle
as Rita tapped it to the rim of the gleaming white bowl. “Not in my kitchen.”

The yolk plopped into the bowl with a soft splat.

“Not in my restaurant.”

The egg white drizzled down slowly, without a noise.

“And certainly not in my life!” Rita tossed the empty shell over her shoulder without looking. The rustle of the brown bag lining her garbage can told her she’d made the shot. “Is that clear?”

Both Jillie and Cozette started to protest at the same time, but Rita did not give them the chance.

“If and when I choose to remodel the Palace is not for you two to say.” Rita winced as her tiara snagged deeper into her hair. She went on talking like nothing was wrong as she worked with the headpiece, pulling one way, then the next, only managing to wind more and more wayward strands around the rhinestones. “I will decide when it will be remodeled and who will do the job. Understand?”

“Fine. Then decide.” Jillie fluttered the pages of the two-year-old calendar on the wall. People all over Memphis kiss butt, connive, and expend outrages amounts of cash to say my brother is their contractor. He is the best in his field and willing to work for you. “If you don’t want him to take this project on, knowing full well he’ll do the best job possible with a guarantee not to go over your—and I say this with all due respect and em
pathy to your situation, sugar—pissant little joke of a budget, then that’s okay by me. Cozie?”

She sat on the couch with her hands clasped between her knees. “Fine by me as well.”

“Good.” Rita gave up on getting the crown off without a mirror and maybe a pair of scissors to help, and sighed. She folded herself safely into the comfy old hospital gown.

Jillie’s heels clicked for a couple steps before she stepped from the linoleum to the well-worn beige carpet.

“Thank heavens that’s settled. Now, who wants waffles?”

Cozie studied the tip of her braid like she could read the future in its ends. “It’s not quite settled, Rita.”

Rita held a second egg over the bowl, her hand frozen in mid-crack. “Why not?”

“My brother is downstairs.”

“Your…? Oh.” Gently, with the expertise of one of western Tennessee’s finest cooks, Rita dropped the egg, shell and all, into the mixing bowl.

Jillie’s brother was waiting downstairs?
If only she had memorized some of the swear words scrawled on the bathroom walls down there. Maybe then she would have a full enough vocabulary to voice her honest opinion of that situation.

“He’s here to help you, Rita. If you don’t want that help, you at least owe it to him to tell him no thank you to his face.”

“Why should I have to tell…”
Wild Billy.
She couldn’t even say his name. “What could I possibly have to say to a man who is…”

Arrogance on wheels. Fast wheels, the faster the better. He roared through Hellon whenever it suited him, but he never stayed long enough to make a difference. When he tore out of town, he left the people who cared about him behind in his dust without a backward glance. That’s how Rita saw him, how she pretty much had always seen him. She saw it in the way he practically ignored his mother and sister to his reluctance to take responsibility for his choices. She’d told him as much once, not that he’d heard her. Or, if he had heard her, he had not stuck around long enough to acknowledge it.

Afterward, just thinking about her audacity in taking him to task made her feel…all the things she hated to feel. Even now just standing here her face grew hot and she had to battle back the emotions the memory, the very man, called up in her.
Stupid, stupid, dumb, and unworthy. Not good enough—never nearly good enough.

All those things she worked so hard to keep at bay in order to retain whatever quiet dignity she could manage in her train wreck of a life washed over her again. Just thinking about him churned her doubts and fears and regrets so close to the surface she didn’t dare even look her best friends straight in the face as they talked about him.

Now those friends were suggesting she march down into Pernel’s Pig Rib Purgatory and throw
Wild Billy out on his—oh, merciful heavens, it was probably still one of the top ten finest creations since the beginning of time—ass! “No.”

“No?” Cozie stole a sidelong glance at Jillie perched on the arm of the couch. “No what?”

“I can’t go down there.”

Jillie folded her arms. “Not looking like this you can’t, but…”

“Not at all! I can’t…I can’t face him
at all
. Don’t you understand, there’s something about him that just…”
Sets my teeth on edge. Makes me want to slap his careless-with-everything-precious-in-life cocky grin into next Tuesday.
Rita rejected the troublesome truth of things and settled on a more diplomatic, nonverbal explanation. She shuddered.

“I told you this was going to work!” Jillie clapped her hands together.

“What are you talking about?” Rita clutched the gold band tangled in her hair.

“After all these years, my big dope of a brother still makes her…” She sat on the arm of the sofa by Cozie, shut her eyes, sucked her breath in between her teeth, and gave a shimmy.

“No, no, not…” Rita did a passing imitation of Jillie’s rapture.

“Liar. This is Wild Billy West we’re talking about here, girl.” Cozette gave her own nature-girl-gone-downright-feral quiver. “That man puts the beef in beefcake. And coming from a lifelong vegetarian, that’s saying something!”

“No!
No beefcake!
Look at me!” Rita extended
her arms. Her hospital gown gapped open over her knee-length sleep T and her pants drooped low enough that the hem almost covered her fuzzy pink slippers. She shook her head. The tiara pitched forward, and her hair fell into her eyes. “Is there
anything
about me that screams ‘bring this woman beefcake’?”

“There’s something about every woman that screams for beefcake, honey.” Cozie laughed.

“If it makes you feel any better, Billy…” Jillie held up her hand. “Uh, he goes by Will now. Apparently that’s some kind of issue with him, but don’t worry about it. Anyway, Billy isn’t built like a quarterback anymore himself.”

“More like a lineman,” Cozie said like she, who hated all forms of competitive sports, had an inkling what she was talking about. “Little more to get your hands on, but he still has the best backfield in the county, if you ask me.”

“I did
not
ask you! I did not ask for any of this.” This was not happening. This could not be happening.

Jillie shook back her perfect hair and smoothed her hand along her silk lapel.

Cozie picked a cocklebur off her sandal strap.

“I can’t believe this! Up until now you two have gotten along about as well as two cats in a bag.”

“What can we say? I was visiting Jillie’s mama the other day, and we crossed paths and got to talking about you.”

“And found out we didn’t dislike each other nearly as much as we thought we would.”

“We both care so much about you, Rita. We figured somewhere that meant we had some common ground, and we decided to try to find it.”

“And sticking your grubby fingers in the big pie of my life is what you came up with?”

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Cozie threw one hand up.

“I know. Our first attempt and we got it abso-freaking-lutely perfect.” Jillie slapped a high five on Cozette’s much larger palm like they’d played on the same team all their lives.

“Perfect? A perfect disaster!” Rita grabbed up the mixing bowl and hugged it to her chest. “I do not want to be set up with your brother, Jillie.”

“It’s not a setup,” Jillie protested.

“It’s not like we expect you two to actually…” Cozie waggled her eyebrows and lowered her voice. “…
date
.”

“Oh, that makes it so much better. You’re not setting up your brother, you’re pimping him.”

Jillie crossed her legs and arms tighter than chains on a miser’s money box. “Oh, hell, Rita, not
everything
is about sex!”

“Yeah, but the really good stuff is.” Cozie put her chin in her hand and sighed.

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