The Homecoming Queen Gets Her Man. Shirley Jump

that.”

      “Making everything perfect, especially your daughter.” The words sprang from Meri’s lips like a cobra waiting to strike. And she’d tried so hard to be polite and dutiful. That had lasted, oh, five seconds.

      Anna Lee’s brows furrowed. “All I ever wanted was for you to be all you could be. You were always such a beautiful girl, so capable of—”

      “I am not here to talk about might-have-beens, Momma. I’m no longer a beauty queen.”

      “You will always be a beauty queen. That’s something no one can take from you. Why, look at all these crowns.” Anna Lee gestured toward the sparkling tiaras, the ribbons, the trophies, all reminders of a different time, a different Meri. “They prove you are the most beautiful girl in all the world.”

      Meri sighed. “I’m not that person anymore, Momma.”

      Anna Lee went on, as if she hadn’t heard Meri speak. “You could have been Miss America, if you had...” She pursed her lips. “Well, that’s neither here nor there.”

      They’d had this argument a thousand times over the years. Some days Meri felt like she was arguing with herself, for all Anna Lee heard. “Momma, please. Let’s not get into that again.”

      Anna Lee reached a hand toward her daughter’s face, toward the pale red scar that arced down Meri’s cheek like an angry crescent moon. “If you’d just let me take you to Doc Archer, he could fix you up and make you perfect again.”

      “Don’t start, Momma. Just don’t start.”

      Anna Lee let out a long sigh. “Well, you think about it.”

      Meri had thought about it almost every day for the past three months, since the attack that had left her with the scar, changed in a thousand ways. But her mother still saw her as the same girl who had won a hundred beauty pageants, the one who had been destined for Miss America before she ran out of town and ditched everything and everyone.

      She should have stayed in the car, kept driving, and avoided this senseless argument. When was she going to accept that her mother was never going to change?

      Meri got to her feet and summoned up a little more patience. If she could have avoided stopping here, she would have, but after talking to Grandpa Ray a couple days ago, she’d been hell-bent on getting home and seeing him again. Which meant, for now, dealing with her mother. “Can I please get the key to the cottage so I can get settled in?”

      Her mother waved behind her. “It’s in the same place as always. Though I don’t understand why you’d insist on staying in that shack when Geraldine made up the bed in your old room.”

      Meri didn’t answer that. She crossed to the antique rolltop desk, pulled out one of the tiny drawers on the right-hand side and retrieved an old skeleton key. When she was a little girl, her daddy would use the guest cottage on the weekends for fishing—and, Meri suspected, time away from Momma and her endless list of expectations. A few times, Daddy had taken Meri along. She’d reveled in those days—when she could get muddy and messy, with no one around to straighten her hair or fuss over her meal choices.

      As soon as Meri curled her palm around the heavy key, she was sixteen again in her mind, on a starlit night at Stone Gap Lake. She’d snuck down to the cottage with Jack, nervous and excited and completely infatuated. She’d been too foolish, too eager to prove she was mature and ready for what Jack wanted. In the end, she’d sat alone on the bank of the lake, confused and heartbroken.

      Her cousin Eli had found her and driven her home, and helped her sneak up the rose trellis to her room before her mother found out she was gone.

      Eli.

      God, how could he be gone? Just being here, it seemed as if her cousin, with his giant personality, was still alive, that she’d see him at Sunday church or hanging out in the drive-through of the Quickie Burger. He was her best friend, one of the few people who could tease her out of a bad mood or a bad day, and more like a brother than a cousin. But in her head she could still hear that heartbreaking call from her aunt last year, telling Meri he was gone. The realization hit her anew with a sharp ache.

      Meri drew in a breath, then tucked the key in her pocket and turned back to her mother. All Meri wanted to do was go see her grandfather, the most sane person on her father’s side of the family. “Have you seen Grandpa Ray?”

      “I have had a number of commitments. Something I’m not sure you remember, Meredith Lee.”

      The use of her formal name told Meri two things—one, her mother was trying to gain control of the situation, and two, she was gearing up to launch a criticism masquerading as a compliment. “I’m not here to discuss the past or what I’m doing with my present, Momma. I’m here to see Grandpa Ray, and be with him for as long as...” The words caught in her throat.

      Too many losses. Meri couldn’t take another. Not now.

      Her mother pursed her lips, then nodded. She waved a delicate, manicured hand. “Then go, go. But be back in time for supper. Geraldine is making roast chicken. She made up your bed with those floral sheets you like, if you change your mind about where you want to stay.”

      Meri sighed. “You knew I wasn’t staying here. Grandpa needs me, so I’m staying at the cottage. Nobody’s living there, and it’s right next door.”

      “Why, Meredith Lee, that is akin to sleeping in the woods. Your grandfather lives like a heathen and that guest cottage of his is no better. Good Lord, when was the last time he cleaned it? It could be positively infested. I don’t think anyone has been there since your father used to go for his fishing weekends.”

      “Just because Grandpa Ray lives in a modest house and doesn’t give a rat’s a—” she cut off the curse before it fully formed “—care about what people think of the way he lives doesn’t make him a heathen.”

      “Geraldine will be sorely disappointed.”

      The maid had been with the family for thirty years, longer than Meri had been alive. She had no doubt the gregarious woman would miss having Meri around, and for a moment, Meri felt bad about that. Then she realized her mother had said Geraldine would be disappointed, not herself.

      Nothing had changed. Nothing at all. “I have to go, Momma.”

      She hurried out of the emotionally stifling house and into her car. She whispered a prayer, then turned the key and with a jerk the Toyota roared to life. Thank God. As soon as she pulled out of the driveway, the lump in her throat cleared and the air smelled sweeter. She wound her way through town, passing the statuesque old South mansions, the quaint storefronts, the moneyed world of Stone Gap, until she reached the southwestern corner, so disparate from the rest of the town it seemed as forlorn as a stepchild, forgotten and left behind.

      This was where Meri fit in, where she could breathe. This hardscrabble section of town, where people let their lawns get overgrown and left bikes in the front yard and didn’t care if someone forgot a glass on the coffee table. She parked in Grandpa Ray’s stone driveway, kicked off the heels and switched them for the flip-flops she kept stowed under the passenger seat, and got out of the car. She swooped her hair up into a ponytail as she walked, and by the time she reached the porch, Meri felt like herself.

      For half a second, Meri expected her cousin Eli to come loping down the street, with his ready smile and another one of his corny jokes. But as she gazed at the empty blacktop, the truth hit her again like a brick. Eli was dead. He had died in the war, on some dusty road in Afghanistan, and he wasn’t coming back. Not now, not ever.

      But his spirit was still here, in the clapboard houses and the big green trees and the happy birds chirping from their perches. In the trees he had planted years ago, the windows he’d helped Grandpa install, the gazebo he’d spent an entire winter building. Eli would have wanted Meri to be happy, to enjoy the day, whether it was short or long, and to never let her grief stew.

      And she was going to try her best to do just that.

      Meri