Just Let Go.... Kathleen O'Reilly

showing proper appreciation for the entertainment. Such as it is.”

      “Thanks for the tip. I’ll be careful. Lots of people there on a Thursday?”

      “Everybody in town,” she promised, and as he walked away, he could hear Delores picking up the phone and starting to dial. In less than ten minutes, everybody would know exactly where he was, including Gillian.

      Austen suspected that he was putting lipstick on a pig. In fact, considering the way he had left Tin Cup, Texas, he suspected that he was going to end up on a plate, served alongside scrambled eggs and a hot cup of coffee.

      And yet still he walked out into the night.

      Some things never changed.

      3

      THERE WAS AN ART to a world-class meringue. It required patience and control. The egg whites had to be whipped to an exact stiffness, the peaks had to be swirled with artistic precision. The toppings were spread on the chocolate cream pie with care, just waiting for Gillian to finish her masterpiece. The spatula was poised in midair, ready to rewrite culinary history, when Mindy burst in through the back door.

      “You shouldn’t break in on a sheriff. I could shoot you dead and there’s no judge in the state that will convict me.”

      Mindy took a long look at the pie, and shook her head, grabbing the spatula from Gillian’s hand. With a merciless smile, she began to massacre what had been a work of art.

      “Give me a break. No criminal is going to bust in through the kitchen door,” Mindy insisted. “Emmett Wanamaker is usually out playing poker in his garage. Modine Wanamaker is usually found in the kitchen and Gillian Wanamaker is never one to be taken by surprise.”

      Not anymore, thought Gillian to herself. “Why are you here?” she asked, thinking seriously about pulling the spatula away, but that was exactly what Mindy wanted.

      “Are you going to go?” her former best friend asked.

      Gillian pretended ignorance and poured two glasses of water from the pitcher on the counter. If Mindy wasn’t seven months pregnant, Gillian would have opted for wine. In fact, if she was a lesser friend, she would have poured herself wine, and made Mindy suffer with water. But she was a world-class friend, a world-class baker, a world-class basket case. After downing her glass, Gillian eyed the lopsided meringue. Unable to restrain herself, she grabbed the spatula out of Mindy’s hand.

      Mindy checked her watch and laughed. “Three minutes. That’s a new record.”

      “Eat this,” she shot back, adjusting the balance of the topping, putting the swirls back in their rightful place. “You’re baking.”

      Gillian looked up and glared. “So?”

      “You’ve heard. You’re in culinary denial.”

      “I can bake without an ulterior motive. It’s not a crime. I would know.”

      Mindy, damn her best-friended-ness, shot her a skeptical look. “You need to go.”

      Undeterred, Gillian put the pie on the windowsill and started work on the next one.

      “How many are you making?” Mindy asked.

      “Seven,” Gillian muttered under her breath.

      Mindy only whistled.

      Gillian straightened, then scowled. “Are you going to stand there with your baby-momma smirk, or are you going to help? And no, that does not mean you can touch my meringue. Grab the bluebonnet tray from above the…”

      Gillian never finished. Mindy’s head was already buried in the cabinet next to the stove. “You have to go,” Mindy insisted, sliding the tray on the white-tiled counter. Gillian had laid the tile herself, and painted the backsplash with a daisy-chain of flowers. She studied the grout with a critical eye. It was dingy, needing to be cleaned. Tonight, she could do that. And laundry. Maybe scrub the bathroom floors, as well. Compulsive? Nah.

      “Don’t wimp out now,”

      “I can’t hear you,” Gillian answered loudly, so loudly that her mother poked her head in through the swinging kitchen door.

      “Gillian?” she asked, and then spotted Mindy, and of course, had to lavish Mindy with a big, squeezy hug, not wise to the sadistic machinations in Mindy’s hormonally overcharged heart. “Mindy! Didn’t hear you come in, but when Emmett’s got the air conditioner running on high, I can’t hear a darn thing. Look at you,” she purred, standing back and assessing Mindy’s belly with a grandmotherly eye.

      Then, just as they all knew she would, she turned to her daughter, shook her head once, and walked out of the room in heartbroken silence.

      “You didn’t have to wear the pink checks,” Gillian pointed out, nodding at Mindy’s adorable maternity blouse in estrogen-exploding pink.

      Mindy grinned. “Never underestimate the impact of your wardrobe decision.”

      “What bubblehead said that?”

      “You did,” Mindy reminded her cheerfully. “What are you going to wear?”

      “I’m not going,” Gillian answered, spelling out vulgar words in the meringue and then swirling over them.

      “You have to go. Think of your pride, your upstanding reputation with all the women in this town. You’re our Che Guevara, our Davy Crockett, our Gloria Steinem. Take pity on those of us who have succumbed to the bonds of marriage. We need your strength, your unsinkable spirit. Gillian Wanamaker cowers from no man, least of all this one. Do you want him to think that you are too yellow-bellied to see him again? If you can’t do it for yourself, think of the women of Tin Cup, Gillian. Think of us, the faceless, the nameless, the married.”

      Gillian couldn’t help but smile. She placed the pie on the breakfast table and pulled the next one from the refrigerator. “He doesn’t even know that I know where he is.”

      “Oh, sure, Sherlock. Riddle me this. How do we know that he’s going to be at Smitty’s?”

      “Delores told Bobby, who told the doc, who told your mother,” Gillian explained in her patient voice.

      “Exactly! And how did Delores ascertain this intriguing fact?”

      Gillian knew where this conversation was leading. She had thought through the paces herself, not that she’d ever admit it. “Delores knew because apparently he conversed with her and told her.”

      “And do you think he would have conversed with her and let that piece of information loose unless he knew in the bowels of his black heart that it would get back to you? That conversation was no mere tongue-slip. It was a master plan, a public challenge, a gauntlet. If you don’t show up, then everybody will know that you know and decided to stay home alone. Once again.”

      It was a cold reminder of Prom Night, when Gillian had stayed home alone, rather than endure the snickers. “I could have plans,” Gillian answered, more than a little defensively.

      “Except that when Jeff called, you turned him down, ergo, everybody knows you don’t have plans.”

      Gillian picked up the spatula and carved little daggers into the topping. “Maybe I don’t want to go to a bar.”

      “Maybe,” agreed Mindy, “but that’s not what everybody is going to be thinking. You know what they’re going to think? They’re going to look at Gillian Wanamaker, the former pride of Crockett County, the only female to take blue ribbons in both baking and marksmanship, and they are going to feel sorry for her. They’re going to think that Gillian Wanamaker has gone soft.”

      “I have not,” Gillian shot back.

      “Then you have to go.”

      Mindy was right. Gillian would be branded a coward, held up for ridicule—again. Sighing, she spun the pie around and started on the other side of