Hell's Belles. Kristen Robinette

trail, luminous blue eyes growing seriously horrified at the prospect. She stroked the bare skin of her arms below her tank top and shivered.

      Erica shot Mattie a look. “Who said everybody’s future fantasies included marriage?”

      The other three stared her down, Erica’s tough-as-leather exterior transparent to her friends. “Get real,” Mattie said.

      “If we’re not married by thirty, we’ll have to do something.” Shay examined the ends of her long auburn curls for splits before nervously smoothing her hair into place.

      Shay’s life hadn’t been as carefree as that of her friends. She’d lost her parents in a car accident at eight years old and had long ago stopped questioning fate. If not for the tragedy, she wouldn’t have moved to Haddes to live with her aunt and uncle and would never have become part of this circle of friends. They were her family. But in three weeks they would graduate from high school and their adolescence would end. Who knew what lay ahead?

      Mattie tugged Della’s hand across the table, admiring the tiny diamond that adorned it. It winked in the dim light of the bar. “At least one of us knows what’s in her future.”

      Della smiled, a lovesick expression on her face. “Donald,” she whispered dreamily, then pressed the ring against her chin. “Wouldn’t it be neat if we all got married and lived in the same apartment building—right here in Haddes?”

      Erica groaned. “Spare me! Besides, who says I even want to be married by thirty?” She downed the last of her cola, then crossed her legs. Adjusting the ankle strap of her spike-heeled sandals, she suddenly looked thoughtful. “Thirty-five, maybe. I gotta admit, any older would be freaky.”

      “We’ll make it an even twenty years from now,” Della said, straightening as she always did at the brilliance of an idea or a piece of juicy gossip. “That means we’ll meet back here on this same day, at the same time—” she did the math, ticking off the years on her fingers, red nails flashing “—in the year 2005.” Her gaze fell to her engagement ring and she bit her lip, marring her perfect candy-apple gloss. “Jeez, that sounds like something from a science-fiction movie.”

      Erica rolled her eyes at the sudden change in mood, grabbed a bar napkin and tore it into four squares. She scribbled the future meeting date, down to the half-hour, on every piece, her large handwriting dominating the small scraps of paper. Then she slid the pieces of napkin across the table to each friend with a challenging smile.

      When each girl held a square, they looked up like reluctant knights of the round bar table, each making brief eye contact with another. Shay looked relieved, hanging on to her scrap of napkin like a teddy bear. Della appeared suddenly uncertain, and Erica defiant as usual. Mattie’s gaze wavered under the scrutiny of her friends, then strayed to the stack of envelopes with a look of pure longing.

      CHAPTER 1

      May 11, 2005

       Della spun the chair around with a whoosh, and Mattie found herself facing a familiar image in the salon mirror.

      “Now then,” Della announced. “You’re presentable.”

      Presentable. Why did that word grate on her nerves? It was true, that was why. Presentable and totally boring, though she’d broken out the most alluring thing in her closet today. But from her mouse-brown hair to her white slacks and aqua twin-set, she was merely…presentable.

      Mattie touched the freshly cropped ends of her hair, causing the bob to swing at chin level. “Do you think I should let it grow out a little?”

      “Why would you?” Della asked, obviously confused. “It would just make it harder to care for. As it is, you can wash it and be presentable in ten minutes.”

      There was that word again. Normally Mattie didn’t spend much time fretting over her appearance, but today was different. Or was it? She wondered if anyone else would remember the reunion date. She met Della’s eyes in the mirror but couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary. Disappointment settled in her chest. Della had forgotten. It was foolish, but she’d carried the scrap of bar napkin in her billfold for twenty years. Lately, though, it seemed to serve more as a reminder of her failures than her fantasies.

      “I guess you’re right.” Mattie responded to Della’s comment and was rewarded with a satisfied smile. Della liked to be right.

      The world could begin spinning again. Mattie Harold, spinster bookstore owner, wasn’t going to let her hair grow out. Much less let it down. God forbid.

      Mattie wrote out a check to Della and resisted the urge to dot her name with a smiley face as she’d done as a teenager. Her eyes stung. She was feeling ridiculously nostalgic today. Blinking away the tears, she glanced around the salon.

      Della had hired a new stylist named Kimee. With jet-black hair cut in a geometric bob and more piercings than a pincushion, Kimee needed no introduction to Haddes’s youth. She was the poster child for the generation gap, hired, as Della said, “to bring in the teens and their allowance.” And bring in the kids she had. Teenage girls lined the waiting area, sitting two to a seat and giggling in nervous anticipation of their Kimee makeover. She was currently stroking fuchsia eyeshadow on a young girl of about fifteen. Her red hair had been cut frighteningly similar to Kimee’s and now sported a streak of white down one side. The girl looked like she’d won the lottery. Her mother looked like she’d just swallowed one of Kimee’s nose rings.

      Just say no, Mom, Mattie thought. But obviously Mom was more interested in making her daughter happy than asserting her parental rights.

      Several of the salon’s patrons, all over sixty, were obviously waiting to see Della. Mattie sighed. It didn’t look as if Della could get away even if Mattie reminded her.

      Which she refused to do.

      Mattie tugged off her cardigan as she left the air-conditioned salon and entered the Georgia heat. May had arrived with confidence, chasing away the cool air. Already the heat was pooling against the asphalt, swirling and rising against her ankles and sandaled feet.

      She lifted her face to the sun, a little sad that her wrinkle-busting, age-defying youth-radiating foundation had an SPF of 30. She hadn’t had an honest-to-God tan in a decade. Back in the good old days, they’d slathered themselves with baby oil mixed with iodine, plopped down on a quilt and fried like teenage eggs. No guilt involved. She forced herself to stop frowning and rubbed the furrow between her eyes. Maybe she should just ditch the wrinkle-defying foundation and zap any intruders with Botox. She’d been thinking a lot about Botox lately. She’d been thinking about a lot of things like Botox lately.

      Mattie sighed. Too much thinking was bad for the soul, not to mention the complexion.

      She tried to clear her mind as she began the three-block walk to her duplex but her thoughts circled back with a will of their own. It seemed like some cosmic joke that she was pushing forty and still single. In her mind she’d freeze-framed her age at about twenty-three. But lately she’d been catching reflections of herself in unexpected places—the window of the drive-thru lane at Hamburger Heaven, the mirrored tile behind the florist’s counter. And the woman who looked back at her was definitely not twenty-three. More often than not, the woman in the reflection was scowling. Mattie touched her forehead again and massaged away the tension.

      It suddenly occurred to her that she’d drifted through life like someone drifting through a supermarket, perusing aisle after aisle with an indefinable craving.

      Despite the encroaching heat, which would soon rule Haddes during the summer months, it was a picture-perfect day. A few residential areas remained downtown, snuggling comfortably against the businesses as they had for decades. Not much had changed in the nearly four decades she’d lived here, but the few changes she’d seen were for the better. Old homes were being renovated by enterprising early-retirees, morphing into quaint tearooms and antiques shops.

      The shops in the original part of the little city were old two-story brick buildings that shouldered one another along Main Street,