The Good Ones Read online

  They even double-dated with Perry and Cooper to the movies once and bowling another time. Maisy only caught Ryder giving Cooper the hairy eyeball three or four times, which she corrected with a neat elbow jab to the side. Perry positively glowed. She was clearly deeply infatuated with Cooper and he seemed to feel the same. Maisy felt as if she was watching a reflection of her own feelings in the young couple and every now and again, she got nervous about when the bottom would fall out as Ryder and Perry left Fairdale for good.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE Royal Order of George met in the hidden room every Sunday night, and those were the only evenings Maisy and Perry didn’t meet their fellas. The ladies, all four, each shared what good deeds they’d done during the week, always keeping it anonymous so that the recipient wouldn’t know who bought their coffee for them in the morning, or who left a bouquet of flowers on their door, or who had dinner delivered from a local restaurant so that they didn’t have to cook.

  “It felt so good to see Bethany open the door to her son,” Jeri said. “She has been missing him for weeks, but he just didn’t have the bus fare to come up from school for the weekend. So, I sent him a round-trip ticket. My husband thought I was crazy as I pretended to water my rosebushes so I could watch her boy knock on the door and see Bethany answer. My goodness, it was as if ten years rolled back off of that woman. She beamed pure sunshine out of her smile, positively beamed.”

  They all laughed while they ate the strawberry rhubarb pie that Savannah had picked up at the Pie in the Sky pie shop for their meeting. They washed it down with ginger ale and despite not being with Ryder at the moment, Maisy felt a sense of completeness that she knew had been missing in her life before they started the good deed club.

  King George, who was now mostly enamored with his own tail, romped around the room, chasing his toys, or his tail, while turning into a miniature cat. He batted at her shoelaces and when she reached down to pet him, he scurried away with his tail down, stalking like a little tiger in forests of Asia. Then he caught sight of Perry’s shoelace and did the same thing.

  “All right, who’s next?” Savy asked. “You all know what I did already—I sacrificed myself in getting this pie.”

  “Pie?” Jeri asked.

  “It was the last one,” Savannah said. “I had to throw an elbow into Mr. Hudson’s side to get him out of the way so I could grab it.”

  “I think that’s the opposite of the point of the Royal Order of George,” Perry said. She picked up the kitten and put her face next to his. So much cuteness in a girl and her cat, it was almost too much. Maisy felt her ovaries drop their eggs like ducks being hit in a shooting gallery. Even though she was using birth control, perhaps it was good that she wasn’t seeing Ryder tonight.

  “Besides, I have it on good authority that you did more than get pie this week,” Jeri said. She tossed her black braids and gave Savy her best Tiffany Haddish, Do not even try to mess with me look.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Savannah said. Then she shoveled a huge bite of pie into her mouth as if that would be the end of the conversation.

  Maisy shook her head and turned to Jeri. “What do you know?”

  “Well,” Jeri said as she huddled closer. “I heard from Wanda at the Food Lion that she saw Savy talking to Quino in the produce section and the next thing she knew they were taking pictures of the melons. She said it was kinky.”

  “Oh, my God!” Savy protested. She swallowed hard before continuing, “That’s not at all what was happening. I was merely answering his question about photography.”

  “Uh-huh,” Maisy said, making it sound as if she thought photography meant something else entirely.

  “I was! He asked me to help him with the marketing for his stable, and I offered to teach him some free basic stuff about social media posts, like what sort of things are engaging. And the bright colors of the fruits under the skylight in the produce section make a nice shot. Oh, man, that does sound perverted.”

  They all looked at her and then Perry said, “It’s all right, Uncle Quino does that to all the ladies.”

  Savy looked at the teen and opened her mouth and then shoved another bite of pie past her lips, chewing furiously as if she didn’t like hearing about Quino and other women. Hmm.

  “How about you, Perry?” Maisy asked. “What was your good deed?”

  “Cooper and I started a pocket change campaign to buy Mrs. Bierman a new motorized scooter,” she said. “She’s our favorite substitute teacher.”

  “Mrs. Bierman is still teaching?” Maisy asked. “Bless her heart, she was there when I was your age. She was the sweetest of the sweet. I want to donate, too.”

  Perry smiled and said, “You don’t have to.”

  “Sure I do. Isn’t that the whole point of the Royal Order of George, to help out and pitch in?” Maisy asked.

  The kitten flopped into the middle of the group and stretched his legs as far as he could. He let out a yawn and Maisy reached down to scratch his tummy. He hugged her hand with his front feet and mouthed her fingers as if looking for food or comfort. “Look what you started, Georgie. A whole wave of good deeds.”

  “I have to say,” Jeri said, “I think Auntie El would be very proud of us for changing our corner of the world.”

  “I think you’re right,” Maisy said. She waited for the ambush grief to hit her, but it didn’t. Instead, for the first time since losing Auntie El, she felt a sense of peace, of letting go. Maybe the good deeds and having Ryder in her life were exactly what she needed to pull her through her mourning. She glanced at her friends and was filled with gratitude. She couldn’t help but hope that somehow everything was going to work out.

  * * *

  • • •

  WHILE the days remained hot in the Smoky Mountains, the nights started to get cooler. Maisy knew that summer was almost over and she dreaded the day that Ryder and Perry packed up and left, leaving her lonely and heartbroken with only King George to comfort her.

  Determined to enjoy the time they had, Maisy spent every moment she could with Ryder, trying to make as many memories as possible before he left. They were sitting on the porch swing after a particularly grueling day in the bookshop. New books had arrived that needed to be shelved and they’d had two reading clubs come in, as well as the plumber when the guest bathroom on the first floor had backed up due to excessive toilet paper being used.

  Maisy had joined the ABA, American Booksellers Association, and was thrilled to see that indie bookstores were thriving. But then she and Jeri had a meeting over the bookstore’s costs versus revenue, and Maisy had made the painful decision to tap into more of her reserves from the trust Auntie El had left her. She would take out a bank loan if she had to, but she was going to make a success of this business even if it killed her.

  At the moment, however, she just wanted to sit on the porch swing with her guy and watch the bats swoop, listen to the meadowlarks cry, and smell the scent of freshly mown grass and honeysuckle on the breeze. Ryder had his arm around her shoulders and their fingers were laced together and every few minutes he would kiss the top of her head. This moment right here was perfection. Maisy tried to imprint it in her mind, because she knew it would never get better than this.

  When a police car pulled into the drive in front of the house, Maisy wondered if something had happened nearby. When Travis Wainwright stepped out of the car, she felt her heart pound a little bit faster. Perry had a date with Cooper tonight. Surely, Travis must know that.

  “Hi, Trav,” she called, hoping she sounded normal and not alarmed.

  “Hi, Maisy, Ryder,” Travis said.

  Ryder rose to his feet and Maisy followed him as he crossed the porch. He looked at Travis and maybe it was fatherly intuition but he said, “You’re not here on a social call, are you?”

  “’Fraid no
t,” Travis said. “The truth is, I’ve got Perry down at the station with Cooper. I’m sorry to say one of my officers took them and two of their friends in.”

  “In?” Maisy asked. “What does that mean—in like ‘indoors’?”

  “No, in as ‘in jail,’” Travis clarified.

  “What on earth for?” Maisy asked.

  “Vandalism,” Travis said. “My officer spotted them out on route twenty-seven. Apparently, they took it upon themselves to paint Mr. Hargraves’s barn pink, and not just a light red sort of pink but a make-your-eyes-water, bubble gum pink.”

  Chapter Thirty

  “SHE’S a minor, so I’m going to need you to be there when we talk about what happened,” Travis said.

  Ryder stood staring at him as if he couldn’t quite comprehend what was being said. Then he shook his head and said, “Sure, right. I’ll follow you to the station.”

  Both men turned to leave, and Maisy caught Ryder by the arm and said, “Wait. I’m coming with you.”

  She ducked into the bookstore and grabbed her purse then she hit the lights and locked the door. Ryder was already in his truck with the engine running when she ran down the steps and jumped up into the passenger seat.

  It was a short ride to the station as it was located across the town green from the bookstore. It was in a squat little redbrick building that Maisy was sure was left over from the post-Depression era, built by the WPA.

  They parked in the lot behind the station and Travis ushered them in through the back door. Sitting on a bench in the hallway, under the watchful eye of the desk officer, were Perry, Cooper, and two other teens, one Maisy recognized as Jasmine Long, Perry’s best friend, who’d been a frequent visitor to the bookshop since they’d opened. The other she didn’t know.

  Perry jumped to her feet immediately and said, “Dad, I can explain.”

  “Vandalism?” Ryder asked. “Exactly how are you going to explain that?”

  “Yes, that’s what I’d like to know, too,” a voice said from behind them. They turned around to see a short, squat man, charging forward. “Travis, what’s this I hear about my kid being arrested?”

  Billy Snyder stomped in like he was looking for a fight, ahead of another set of parents who arrived behind him. Maisy didn’t know the second couple, but judging by the looks on Jasmine’s face, these were her parents. Maisy had known Billy since grade school. He had spent most of his formative years in detention, so he was certainly on some slippery moral high ground if he got too upset about his own kid making a bad choice.

  “Settle down, Billy,” Travis said. “My kid is here, too. All right, let’s be calm and go have a seat and hear what the kids have to say.”

  He gestured for the parents and teens to follow him and they entered a small conference room at the end of the hall. They shuffled into seats, but Maisy paused at the doorway. As fond as she was of Perry, she wasn’t really sure she was a part of this. Ryder glanced at her and grabbed her hand, pulling her into the room with him. Okay, then.

  “All right,” Travis said. “Let’s hear it.”

  Perry and Cooper exchanged a glance while the other two teens stared at them. It was pretty clear whose idea the painting of the barn had been.

  Cooper stood and said, “It’s my fault. I thought we were doing a good thing, but it was dark and I didn’t realize that I had the wrong paint.”

  Perry shot to her feet next to him and said, “No, it’s my fault. The whole thing was my idea. I got the paint and the rollers and I talked everyone into helping me, because I thought we were doing something nice for Mr. Hargraves, you know, trying to pay it forward because he, well, he’s kind of mean and he doesn’t have anyone else, and if anybody ever needed a helping hand, it’s him, but—”

  “Perry, no! You have more at stake here than I do,” Cooper said. He turned to his father. “The blame is all mine, Dad. I screwed up and I’m really sorry. I’ll make it right. I swear.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Perry said. She looked at Chief Wainwright. “It wasn’t Cooper, it was me.”

  Travis pinched the bridge of his nose as if warding off a headache. “You kids realize that in North Carolina vandalism is a class-one misdemeanor punishable by a minimum fine of five hundred dollars and at least twenty-four hours of community service?”

  “But, Dad, we weren’t vandalizing the property—” Cooper protested.

  “Wainright! What the hell is going on?” Mr. Hargraves, who was eighty if he was a day, stomped into the room, wearing his usual overalls and flannel shirt. His skin was deeply tanned from years in the sun, and his white hair was tufted on his head, probably from removing the John Deere cap he held in his hand.

  “I’m sorry to call you down here so late, Mr. Hargraves,” Travis said. “We have a bit of a situation.”

  “So I reckoned when I got home and found one of your lackeys in my driveway,” he said. He glanced around the room. “Who are all of you people?”

  “Mr. Hargraves, I am so sorry,” Perry said. “The paint was supposed to be red, like, barn red, but instead it turned out pink. We thought maybe it would dry red, but it didn’t and we finished a whole side before we realized it. I don’t know how the mix-up happened. I am so sorry.”

  “I’m sure you are,” Mr. Hargraves said. His voice was thick with sarcasm as his bushy white eyebrows met in the middle, making one severe line across his forehead. “It must have been a real hoot to play a joke on an old man. I bet you thought it would be hilarious for every person driving in and out of town on route twenty-seven to have a big old laugh at old man Hargraves and his pink barn.”

  “No, sir, we didn’t. I swear,” Cooper said. He reached down and took Perry’s hand in his. “We really were trying to do something good.”

  “Liar,” Mr. Hargraves snapped. “You rotten kids were up to no good and you got caught. Don’t try to turn it into something else now.”

  “We’re not,” Perry protested. “We really were trying to do a good deed.”

  “Why?” Mr. Hargraves stared at her. It was a look full of disbelief and distrust and Maisy was impressed that Perry didn’t buckle under the hard stare. “Why would anyone want to help me?”

  Perry’s voice was soft when she answered, “Because you need it.”

  Hargraves was the first one to look away.

  “Here’s what I don’t understand,” Ryder said. His voice was tight and Maisy could tell he was equal parts furious and bewildered. “How did the idea to paint someone else’s barn even pop into your head?”

  “We thought doing an anonymous good deed would make us feel better about ourselves,” Perry said. “But it didn’t really work out that way.” Sorry. She mouthed the words to her friends.

  “Oh, dear,” Maisy said. She had a feeling this was one of Perry’s random good deeds for the Royal Order of George, but it had clearly gone horribly awry.

  Ryder turned and gave her a questioning glance.

  “This is going to go on our permanent record, isn’t it?” the other boy asked. He looked at Billy and turned a sickly shade of green. Maisy feared he might throw up. “If this keeps me out of college, I’ll just die.”

  “A misdemeanor stays on your record,” Chief Wainwright said. He looked at Cooper as if he couldn’t believe he was having this conversation with his son. “Even if you don’t do jail time there are collateral consequences that will follow you for the rest of your life. I believe that you were trying to do something good, but this is serious. Every background check run for school admission, a line of credit, a job, is going to see that you have this in your file and it will take you out of the running automatically with no chance to explain your good intentions.”

  All four teens paled, looking shaken and scared.

  Ryder looked at Perry and shook his head. “What were you thinking? You realize this could keep you out of Saint Mary’s Prep? You�
��ve put everything you’ve worked so hard for at risk and for what?”

  They stared at each other for several seconds and Maisy wanted desperately to jump in but she knew it wasn’t her place. This was between father and daughter.

  “I’m sorry,” Perry said. “I don’t know what else I can say.”

  The air between them practically vibrated with anger, frustration, and hurt.

  Perry turned away from her father and faced Mr. Hargraves and Travis. “It was my idea, all mine. If you’re looking to file charges against someone, please just file them against me. The others don’t deserve to be punished for this.”

  “No, I—” Cooper protested but Perry shushed him.

  Mr. Hargraves rocked back and forth on the heels of his well-worn work boots. He studied Perry as if sizing her up.

  “You’re a feisty one, aren’t you?” Mr. Hargraves asked Perry. She looked uncertain as to whether to agree with him or not. Then she gave him a slow nod. He nodded back as if they understood each other. “I suppose it’s a good thing that I’m kind of partial to the color pink.”

  The entire room went still. Was Hargraves going to let the kids off the hook? Maisy wanted to kiss the old duff right on his downy head. He was clearly rethinking his position but, honestly, how could he live with a bright-pink barn? Unless . . .

  “Mr. Hargraves, have you ever considered using the side of that barn as, say, a billboard?” Maisy asked. The entire room turned toward her and Maisy felt her face get warm. She had an amazing Idea! but it would only work if she could convince Mr. Hargraves that it was a good one.

  “I’m not following,” he said. Then he squinted at her. “Well, shoot, is that you, Maisy Kelly? You look more like your aunt Eloise every day.”

  “Thank you.” Maisy smiled at what she considered a high compliment. Then she explained, “I just opened a bookstore in town, and I would love to pay you a monthly stipend to let me advertise my shop on the side of your barn.”