The Sugar Queen (2 page)

"Did I just hear your maid call you and your mother Oldsey and Oldgret?" Della Lee asked, laughing.

Of course Della Lee found that funny. Some people liked to call Josey and her mother the Cirrini Sisters. Margaret had Josey late in life. Josey was only twenty-seven, so they were essentially calling her an old woman, but they were comparing her to Margaret, who was once the belle of Bald Slope, the woman married to the late, great Marco Cirrini. There were worse things to be called. Margaret didn't like the nickname and discouraged it whenever possible. Margaret was small, fair and ethereal. Josey looked like a thick dark blob next to her.
Sisters?
Margaret would say.
We
look nothing alike.

Josey's shoulders dropped. "It's a wonder she didn't see you. You're going to get caught."

"It's just for a little while."

"Define 'a little while.' "

"However long it takes, I guess. Days? Weeks?"

"I hear the closets at the Holiday Inn are fabulous. You should try them."

"Ah, but they don't come with a built-in snack machine like this one," Della Lee said, and Josey had to accept that Della Lee, cocky, mascara-stained and stubborn, was going to stay in her closet until
she
decided to leave. "You're not going to argue?" Della Lee asked.

"Would it do any good?"

"It might make you feel better."

"There's only one thing that makes me feel better. Excuse me," Josey said as she leaned in and slid back the false wall.

Della Lee scooted quickly to a corner, more dramatically than Josey thought was necessary, as if afraid Josey might decide to touch her. Josey grabbed a red tin of Moravian cookies and a packet of Mallo Cups, then she went to her desk and sat. She opened the tin of cookies and started eating slowly, savoring each thin spice-and-molasses bite.

Della Lee watched her for a while, then she turned and sprawled out on the floor of the closet, staring up at Josey's clothes. She lifted one jeans-clad leg in the air to brush the clothes, and for the first time Josey noticed that Della Lee was wearing only one shoe. "So this is the life of Josey Cirrini," Della Lee finally said.

Josey focused on her cookie. "If you don't like it, you can leave."

"Is this really what you do all day? Don't you have friends?" Della Lee asked, shaking her head. "I didn't know your life was like this. I used to envy you when you were a kid. I thought you had everything."

Josey didn't know what to say to that. She couldn't imagine someone as beautiful as Della Lee envying her. Josey didn't have everything. She had only money. And she would give that away, that and everything else she had, every grain of sugar, for the one thing she wanted most in the world but would never have.

Suddenly her head tilted to one side.

Like magic, she felt him getting nearer, felt it like a pull in the pit of her stomach. It felt like hunger but deeper, heavier. Like the best kind of expectation. Ice cream expectation. Chocolate expectation. Soft nougat pulling from a candy bar.

So the red sweater
did
still have some luck left in it.

"What's the matter?" Della Lee asked as Josey pushed back her chair and went to her window.

He was coming up the sidewalk. He was early today.

The Cirrini house was located in one of the oldest neighborhoods in town. ^When Marco Cirrini made his fortune with the Bald Slope Ski Resort, he bought a house in the neighborhood he'd always dreamed about living in, then promptly tore the house down. He built a large bright blue Victorian lady in its place. He said he wanted a house that would stand out even among the standouts. He wanted everyone who passed by the house to say, "Marco Cirrini lives there." All the houses in the neighborhood were recessed except the Cirrini house, which was front and center, the eager look-at-me house built by the son of poor Italian immigrants.

Adam would be at the door in no time.

Josey hurried out of the room.

Helena and Margaret were talking in the sitting room when Josey came down the stairs, slowing her pace to a walk. "The mail is here," she called to them.

Margaret and Helena didn't stop their conversation, which sounded something like this:

"Naomi O'Toole?"

"Yes, Oldgret."

"She
was there?"

"Yes, Oldgret."

Josey opened the front door with its crazy colorful stained-glass panels, then she pushed open the screen, her eyes on the front porch steps, not wanting to miss a moment of him. The screen door abruptly stuck, hitting something soft. She realized, to her horror, she'd hit Adam Boswell with the door as he was putting the mail in the black-flapped mailbox hanging to the right.

"Whoa," Adam said, smiling, "what's your hurry, Josey?"

He was dressed in his cooler-weather uniform, the pants covering the scars on his right leg, the leg he favored. He was a good-looking, athletic man. His round face was always tan, golden, in fact, like something warm and bright was glowing inside of him. He had curly dark-blond hair he sometimes pushed back with a bandana tied around his head. He was in his thirties, and he had a secret. She didn't know what it was, but she could tell.

Adam wasn't from here, Josey knew that much. Three years ago he'd shown up on her doorstep, mail in hand, and her dreams had never been the same. Adventurous types flocked to Bald Slope and its famous steep ski runs. She'd always wondered if the slopes had brought him here, and if that was the reason he stayed. Though her mother sold the resort shortly after Marco died, it made Josey feel happy to think that she had something, however tenuous, to do with Adam being here.

He popped one of the ear buds from his iPod out of his ear when she just stood there and stared at him. "Josey, are you okay?"

She immediately felt herself blush. He was the only person in the world she was tongue-tied around, and yet the only person she really wanted to talk to. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know you were already here. You're early today."

"The mail was light. This is all I have for you," he said, handing her the catalog he'd been about to put in the mailbox before she pummeled him with the screen door.

"Thank you."

He looked at her for a moment. "You have something"— he pointed to her lips, then touched the corner of his own mouth—"right here."

She immediately put her fingertips to her lips and felt the cookie crumbs there. She brushed them away, embarrassed. Oh yes, she was witty
and
clean.

"Beautiful day, isn't it?" he said, taking a deep breath. The cool noon air was flavored with the mulchy scent of fallen leaves and the last of the hardiest flowers curling away for the winter. "I love fall."

Josey's fingers froze on her lips, completely enchanted by him. "Me too."

"It makes you want to do something, doesn't it?" he said, grinning. "Like get out and . . . play in trees."

That made Josey laugh. Adam watched her as she laughed, and she didn't know why. It was like she'd surprised him.

Adam finally said, "Well, I'll see you later."

"Right," she said. "Bye, Adam."

She held her breath, her own superstition, until he walked down the steps and crossed the street. As soon as he reached the other side, disappearing from her world, she went back in the house.

She walked into the sitting room, where Helena had set up the ironing board to press some of Margaret's dresses.

"Only a catalog in the mail today," Josey said. "I'm going to take it to my room, okay?"

"Wait," Margaret said, squinty-eyed as she looked Josey over. "Were you wearing that sweater at the doctor's office?"

Oh no. She meant to take it off when she came in. "Yes," she said, then added quickly, "but I had my coat on over it."

"Josey, I asked you to get rid of that sweater last year. It's been washed so many times that it's far too small for you."

Josey tried to smile. "But I like it."

"I'm just saying you need to find something that fits. I know you love your catalogs. Find something in a larger size. And red isn't a good color on you. I could wear red when I was your age. But that's because I was blond. Try white. Or black."

"Yes, Mother."

Josey turned and walked back out of the sitting room. She went up the stairs to her room, where she sat at her desk and stared at the wall. She tugged on the sweater selfconsciously.

"So who is he?" Della Lee asked from the closet.

"Excuse me?"

"The man you ran out of here to see."

Josey immediately sat up straighter. She put the catalog on the desk and opened it, startled.
How on earth did she know
that?
"I don't know what you mean."

Della Lee was silent for a while as Josey ate cookies and pretended to look at the catalog. "It feels like he's taken your heart, doesn't it?" Della Lee finally said. "Like he's reached in and pulled it from you. And I bet he smiles like he doesn't know, like he doesn't know he's holding your heart in his hand and you're
dying
from him."

It was the truest, purest, saddest thing she had ever heard spoken. It was like hearing gospel for the first time, how it shocked you, how it made you afraid because you thought no one could see inside you. Josey leerily turned to look at Della Lee.

"You're wondering how I know. Girls like us, when we love, it takes everything we have. Who is he?"

"Like I would tell you."

Della Lee leaned forward. "I
swear
I won't tell anyone," she said seductively.

"Yes, and we both know how honest you are."

"Fine. Tell me when you're ready. I can help you, you know. Yes, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to help you." Della Lee leaned back. Josey caught a whiff of tobacco and mud.

"You're in no shape to help anyone. What happened to you, Della Lee? You still look like you're wet."

Della Lee looked down at her clothes, then she touched her hair, which was heavy and flat. "Oh, I forgot," she said. "I took a little dip in the river."

"You swam in the river at this time of year?" Josey asked incredulously.

"Seemed like a good idea at the time. The last stupid thing I did before I went up north." Della Lee shrugged. "Like redemption, you know?"

"Redemption for what?"

"More than you could ever imagine. Listen, I want you to go to a sandwich shop on the first-floor rotunda of the courthouse. It's across from the elevators. A woman named Chloe Finley owns the place, and you'll love her. She makes a grilled tomato and three-cheese sandwich that will make your head spin it's so good. Get me one, will you?"

Josey, stuck on the image of Della Lee in the cold Green Cove River, dunking herself in her own version of a baptism, was caught off guard by the sudden change of subject. "You want me to get you a sandwich right now?"

"Why not?"

"Because I have to eat lunch with my mother at twelve- thirty. Then I have to sit with her when our financial advisor comes by this afternoon. Then I have to get her into the bathtub this evening, then get her settled in bed."

Unfazed, Della Lee said, "Tomorrow, then."

"I take my mother for her manicure and pedicure tomorrow."

"Thursday?"

"I have to take my mother to her ladies' club meeting Thursday."

"No wonder you have so many travel magazines. If you ever manage to get off this gerbil wheel, I bet you'll take off."

"I will not,"
Josey said, indignant, because respectable daughters stayed. Never mind that she dreamed of leaving every single day. "What if I like living like this? Did you ever think of that?"

Della Lee snorted.

Josey put the lid back on the cookie tin and stood. She took it and the uneaten packet of Mallo Cups back to the closet. "You can eat anything you want back here. I'm not getting you a sandwich."

"No, thanks. I'll wait."

"You're going to be waiting a long time."

She laughed. "Honey, I've got nothing but time."

SweeTarts

For nearly a century,
the town of Bald Slope barely sustained itself as a High Country summer getaway for the hot, wilted wealthy from North Carolina's Piedmont. The town slept like a winter beast during the cold months, summer houses and most downtown shops boarded up. Locals got by on vegetables they'd canned and money they'd made in the summer. By the time the last snow melted, they were weak and hungry and couldn't wait for the summer residents to return.

Marco Cirrini had been skiing on the north face of Bald Slope Mountain since he was a boy, using the old skis his father brought with him from Italy. The Cirrinis had shown up out of nowhere, walking into town in the middle of winter, their hair shining like black coal in the snow. They never really fit in. Marco tried, though. He tried by leading groups of local boys up the mountain in the winter, showing them how to make their own skis and how to use them. He charged them pennies and jars of bean chutney and spiced red cabbage they would sneak out of their mothers' sparse pantries. When he was nineteen, he decided he could take this one step further. He could make great things happen in the winter in Bald Slope. Cocky, not afraid of hard work and handsome in that mysterious Mediterranean way that excluded him from mountain society, he gathered investors from as far away as Asheville and Charlotte to buy the land. He started construction on the lodge himself while the residents of the town scoffed. They were the sweet cream and potatoes and long-forgotten ballads of their English and Irish and Scottish ancestors, who settled the southern Appalachians. To their way of thinking, the way it had been was the way it should always be. They didn't want change. It took fifteen years, but the Bald Slope Ski Resort was finally completed and, much to everyone's surprise, it was an immediate success.

Change was good!

Stores didn't shut down for the winter anymore. Bed- and-breakfasts and sports shops and restaurants sprouted up. Instead of closing up their houses for the winter, summer residents began to rent them out to skiers. Some summer residents even decided to move to Bald Slope permanently, moving into their vacation homes with their sleeping porches and shade trees, thus forming the high society in Bald Slope that existed today. Marco himself was welcomed into this year-round society. He was essentially responsible for its formation in the first place, after all. Finally it didn't matter where he came from. What mattered was that he'd saved Bald Slope by giving it a winter economy, and he could do no wrong.

This town was finally his.

Josey stopped in front
of a small yellow bungalow and compared the number on the mailbox to the address she'd copied out of the phone book that morning. This was it. She leaned into the steering wheel and peered out the windshield. The paint looked fresh, and the windows were clean. But Della Lee obviously hadn't tended to her small yard since summer. Garden gnomes and plastic flowers still lined the walkway to the porch, and there was a long plastic chair for sunbathing still in the yard, now covered with small red- black leaves that had fallen from the dogwood by the house.

She put the large gold Cadillac—her mother's idea—in park and cut the engine.

This blue-collar neighborhood was one Josey was faintly familiar with because her father would pass through it on their Sunday drives when Josey was a child. Josey lived for those drives. It was the only time in her entire childhood she ever felt calm. The rest of the time, she was locked in a constant power struggle with her mother, a struggle Josey couldn't even explain today. She had no idea why she'd been so mean as a child. She had no idea why she'd pitched such fits. Her mother certainly deserved better. But during those drives, Josey would relax while Marco talked. He knew everything about Bald Slope. He knew every neighborhood by heart. He was in his late sixties when Josey was born, and by that time he was an established figure in town, rich, silver-haired and swaggering. His father was a chimney sweep, and Marco dropped out of school in sixth grade to work with him. He used to tell Josey that he'd stand on rooftops when he was a boy and look at the houses and dream of owning the tallest house in the best neighborhood, where no one could look down on his roof, let alone look down on him.

Marco died when Josey was nine, and it felt like someone waking her up with a hard pinch. All she had left was her mother, and she'd been so terrible to her. That's when she decided, even if it took forever, she was going to make up to her mother every horrible thing she'd done. The day her father died was the first day Josey bit her tongue, the first day she took criticism and didn't fight back, and the day she began to realize how hard it was going to be to change the way people saw her as a child. Almost twenty years later, she was still trying.

Taking a deep breath, Josey got out of the car.

She'd caught a lucky break that day after taking her mother to the salon. Josey usually sat and waited for her, chatting with the older ladies, making sympathetic noises when they told her all about their sciatica and arthritis. But her mother reminded her that she had to pick up the peppermint oil Margaret had specially made by Nova Berry, the strange woman whose family ran the organic market. They were running low. And obviously not enough was being sprinkled on the thresholds of their house. That would certainly explain how Della Lee had managed to get in.

Josey went to pick up the oil, but Nova didn't have it ready yet. She said to come back in a few days, then she told

Josey once again that red was a magic color for her, which Josey always liked to hear even though Nova probably only said it to get her to buy one of her red crocheted scarves or hats. After leaving the market, Josey only meant to drive by Della Lee's house. She didn't have time for this. Still . . . Della Lee had been in Josey's closet for two days now, and Josey was still no closer to figuring out why she was there, or how exactly to get her out without revealing Josey's secret stash to the world. Maybe Della Lee's house would give Josey something to bargain with. Maybe there was something in there Della Lee was hiding.

Nothing like a little breaking and entering to liven up a day.

The dogwood leaves crunched underfoot as Josey picked her way across the yard, trying not to look like she was sneaking around. When she reached the porch, she was surprised to find the door open, even on this cool day. Did Della Lee have roommates?

She raised her hand to knock, then hesitated. Holding her fist in the air with indecision, she finally knocked once on the screen door.

No answer.

"Hello?" she called. Even from outside, she could smell the tight, hot, closed-in scent of the interior, like old linens left in a dryer for too long. The furnace was running on high.

Still no answer. It occurred to her that Della Lee might have left in a hurry, that she might have left the door open. Curiouser and curiouser.

She looked over her shoulder to see if anyone might be watching her, then she opened the screen door and entered.

The place was a mess. There were beer cans everywhere. There was a broken coffee mug on the floor and a stain of coffee on the far wall, as if the mug had been thrown. A chair was overturned.

She had taken only a few steps in, kicking a beer can and what looked to be the ripped-off sleeve of a woman's denim shirt, when she stopped short, her scalp tightening and her heart jumping against her rib cage like a startled cat.

There was a man sleeping on the couch.

She stood there for a few moments, paralyzed, afraid that she might have made enough noise to wake him.

He was, very clearly, not the kind of man you wanted to wake.

He didn't have a shirt on and his jeans were unzipped, one hand tucked halfway inside his fly. He had a smug smile on his lips like he knew, even in his sleep, that women all around him were dying from love because he'd taken their hearts and hidden them where they'd never find them.

His muscles indicated he spent a lot of time in a gym. His cheekbones were high and his hair was long and straight and dark. He smelled of alcohol and of something else, like if you took a match to a rosebush. It smelled good, but dark and smoky, and it made Josey feel heady, like she was losing herself in it somehow.

All at once she understood.

This was the reason Della Lee left.

She'd come here to get something on Della Lee, and look what she found. She took a step back, profoundly ashamed of herself. She should just get out of there. Pretend she didn't know.

But then something on an elemental level stopped her. She felt a connection to Della Lee at that moment, one she couldn't explain. She
felt
her here, felt her genuine, profound unhappiness, like it was her own. It felt so familiar, that belief that nothing was ever going to change so why try anymore.

Okay, so maybe letting Della Lee know that she knew might help. It might keep Della Lee from coming back to this . . . this
violence.

She turned her head slightly, and she could see down a short hallway.

She took a few more slow steps backward, keeping her eyes on the man's face, watching for movement. She then turned and walked on the balls of her feet down the hallway, bypassing small piles of his dirty clothes. There were crooked photos on the wall of Della Lee as a child, with dark hair and eyes. Josey wondered when she started dyeing her hair blond. In one photo she was standing on top of a jungle gym. In another she was diving into the public pool from the high dive. She looked like she was daring the world to hurt her.

Della Lee's bedroom at the end of the hall looked like something out of Josey's teenage dreams. Back then Josey had politely asked her mother if she could hang a poster or two, if she could have some colorful curtains or a bedspread with hearts on it. Her mother had responded with disappointment. Why would Josey ask for something else, as if what she had wasn't good enough? The heavy oak bed, the antique desk and the sueded chaise in Josey's room were all Very Nice Things. Josey obviously did not appreciate Very Nice Things.

The walls in Della Lee's room were painted purple and there were sheer lavender curtains on the single window. A poster of a white Himalayan cat was taped on one wall, along with some pages torn out of fashion magazines. There was a white mirrored dresser that had makeup tubes and bottles littered across the surface. Some tote bags with names of cosmetic companies, like department store gifts with purchase, were stashed in the corner near the dresser.

Josey grabbed a few bags and slowly slid open the drawers until she found socks and panties and bras. She stuffed one bag full, then she put the makeup in another bag.

Her heart beating thickly, she went to the closet and took clothes off the hangers as quietly as possible. She knelt to get a few pairs of shoes. There were two very different sets of shoes: grease- and food-stained sneakers that she obviously wore to work, and leather boots and strappy heels she probably wore out at night. Josey took two from each category. She was just about to stand when she noticed the cardboard box in the corner of the closet. It had sweaters stacked on top of it and
private
written on the side in green marker.

She crawled to the box and slid the sweaters off. Inside the box were dozens of old spiral notebooks, bundles of letters and photographs. And a couple of old pieces of jewelry, sentimental but not expensive, were wrapped in yellowy tissue paper. There was a yearbook from Bald Slope High with Della Lee's name embossed on it. Her birth certificate was folded inside.

She suddenly heard some movement coming from the living room. She turned her head, brushing a coat that was hanging above her. One shoulder of the coat slipped off the hanger and it swayed precariously, a breath away from falling off altogether. She heard the man sigh and then the squeak of the springs on the old couch.

He was coming down the hall.

Her body felt tight, and her ears actually felt like they turned as she strained to hear what he was doing. It took a moment to realize that he was using the bathroom, which shared a wall with the closet.

The wire hanger was still swinging above her, squeaking slightly. If the coat slipped off, the hanger would hit the wall and he would hear. She watched it desperately, saying all sorts of prayers.

The commode flushed and he shuffled out into the hall. His steps were slow, sleepy.

The squeak of the couch springs again.

Silence.

Josey waited until her muscles were quivering with tension from keeping the same awkward position for so long, then she scooted out of the closet with the box. She stood stiffly and grabbed the tote bags. She went to the bedroom doorway and peered out before slowly walking down the hallway. She stopped just before the turn into the living room.

She could hear him breathing.

But was his breath shallow enough to indicate he was asleep again?

She screwed up her courage and took that final step into the living room.

Then she almost dropped everything she was carrying.

He was sitting up on the couch.

But then she saw that his head was resting back against the cushions. He'd fallen asleep sitting up. There was a cigarette almost burned down to the filter in an ashtray on the coffee table in front of him. Next to the ashtray there was a scuffed leather pocketbook with a shiny purple wallet sticking out of it with the initial
D
on it in white.

Della Lee would need her ID.

Josey was trembling as she took those few steps to the pocketbook. She had to lean down, box and tote bags and all, to get the wallet and slide it out.

Josey then backed quietly to the door, pushing open the screen with her butt, her eyes not leaving him until the last possible moment when she had to turn.

She tried to catch the screen door with her elbow so it wouldn't slap shut, but she was too late. It hit the casing with a bang.

She took off down the steps. It had been so hot inside the house that running in the chilly air outside felt like falling into water. The damp hair at the base of her neck instantly turned cold and gave her goosebumps. She stopped on the sidewalk and dropped Della Lee's things by the car. She fished her keys out of her coat pocket and electronically opened the trunk with the device on her key chain, at exactly the same time the screen door to the bungalow slapped shut again and the beautiful long-haired man walked out onto the porch.