CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
To: Beautification Committee
From: Bruce Oakleigh
Subject: Privacy reminder
Hello, fellow B.C. members,
President Bruce Oakleigh here. Attached, please find the minutes of last night’s meeting. I’d like to once again welcome our two new members and remind them that confidentiality and subtly are two of the Beautification Committee’s hallmarks of operation.
Gia and Eva, if you have any concerns about your capability to keep our business secret, here are a few suggestions.
Only open B.C. emails on a private device in a private room (i.e. Linen closet, locked bathroom, etc). This ensures that no family member accidentally stumbles upon our confidential information.
Use only the operational codes for matches. This ensures that no matchee knows they are being matched.
Consider hiding your B.C. binder in a safe, secure place. Amethyst and I purchased a fire safe which is kept in a secure location within our home.
Should you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact a senior member of the committee.
Yours in matching success,
Bruce Oakleigh
P.S. It is forbidden to discuss committee business with any past members, especially those who have been ousted.
--------
Eva usually didn’t mind keeping secrets. She was good at it. But this one wasn’t sitting well. Not with how raw she felt over seeing her mother in the flesh standing on the picturesque Main Street of Blue Moon. And not with Donovan calling her up to mention how much he admired her honesty and appreciated her trusting him enough to talk about her childhood.
“So how was your morning?” Donovan asked sweet as pie through the phone.
“You mean my post-orgasmic bliss? It’s going well,” she joked.
He laughed softly, and Eva felt some of the ice in her belly thaw.
“Are you home?” he asked.
She could tell he was fishing for something. “I am,” she said, pacing through her tiny living room and willing away the unsettled feeling. “Getting ready to write thanks to all of last night’s inspiration.”
“That was a lot of inspiration,” he admitted amicably. “Enough to warrant a good strong cup of coffee this morning.”
She couldn’t tell if he was making a statement or outright asking, but the bottom line was Niko and Jax had sold her out.
“Let me guess, Jax and Niko blabbed to you.”
“Eva.” It was all the confirmation she needed before mentally adding their names to the running list of secondary characters to torture in future books. She frowned at the way Donovan said her name, oozing with patience. “Don’t use your sheriff voice on me,” she warned him.
“Jax and Niko said they ran into you outside the coffee shop.”
“And invited me to the apple butter boil, whatever that is, on Saturday. Did they tell you that, too?”
“They mentioned it looked like you were having a confrontation.” He was tenacious, sticking to the point with a stubbornness that was putting her in a tough spot.
“Did they now?”
“Eva. What happened?”
Frustrated, she blew out a breath. “I need to ask you a favor.”
“Anything,” he promised.
“I need space to handle something before I can talk to you about it. I need you to trust me to handle it on my own, and I promise you, once it’s fixed I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
He was silent, and she could hear his wheels turning. She was using his own goodness against him, but there was no way she was going to dump this mess on his lap. If she hadn’t gone to her own family for help, she certainly wasn’t going to drag her shiny new boyfriend into it. No, this was her journey. Her responsibility. She’d enabled her mother for her entire adult life. It stopped now, and it stopped with her.
“Please, Donovan? I need to do this on my own.” He’d give her anything she’d ask for within reason. And he only had to debate whether this was within reason.
He swore. “I don’t like this Eva.”
“I swear to you it’s nothing to be worried about. It’s just an old mess that I’m finally cleaning up. I know it’s a lot to ask given your perpetual town-wide caregiver state, but I need to do this for me. I can’t have someone else fix it for me.”
“You’ll tell me once it’s done?”
“I’ll tell you everything,” she promised. “But there’s one more thing.”
“Eva,” he rasped.
“You can’t say anything to my family. They don’t need to know about this.”
“How can I say anything when you’re not trusting me to tell me what’s going on?”
“Donovan, I trust you. This is just something I need to do myself. Please understand. Please?”
He sighed, and she knew she’d won. But the victory wasn’t sweet. She felt like she was letting him down.
“I know I’m asking you to take a leap of faith here. But I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
“You’re not doing anything illegal?” he demanded.
“No. Nothing you’d have to arrest me for,” she promised.
“That woman. You weren’t married to her or something, and she’s refusing to divorce you because you adopted five kids together?”
Eva laughed and felt the weight lift off her just a bit. “No, and where did you get that idea?”
“This cosmic bullshit that’s happening right now makes anything possible.”
“I promise to make this up to you as soon as the cosmic bullshit is over.”
“Holding you to it. And Eva?”
“Yeah?”
“You know if you need me I’m there, right?”
She smiled, felt the truth of his words. “Yeah. I know that. And I love it.”
“I love you, Eva.”
She chewed on her lip. “I’m not sure if I’m ready for non-sexual declarations of love,” she admitted.
“Yeah, well. Get used to it.” He sounded down, and she hated knowing it was her fault. He was the hero type. He considered it his job to clean up messes for the people he cared about, and she wasn’t letting him do that.
“I’m going to go write, but I’ll be thinking about you,” she promised.
“Please be safe, Eva.”
--------
Eva glared at the blinking cursor and willed the words to come. She’d expected a flood of romance to dance from her fingers after her night with Donovan.
And then her mother had shown up and ruined everything. And letting Donovan down didn’t exactly help those creative juices flow either. She felt like a big, human-shaped pile of shit. And it was all Agnes’s fault.
She’d hoped a simple, stalwart “no” would drive her mother out of her life. Taking the shame and self-doubt with her. But by showing up here, Agnes was threatening everything Eva held dear.
She pushed away from the table, abandoning the blinking cursor, and got up to make coffee. She found the pot was full with hot water. Apparently forgetting that she’d a) made coffee and b) forgotten to actually add the coffee.
“Get a hold of yourself,” Eva cautioned herself. But the worry was clawing at her throat. The woman who had single-handedly inflicted damage on every one of her family members was here and waiting to strike. And this time, she was close enough that she could hurt them all. They were all married and happy, working and living and loving in this tiny town. And Agnes Merill wanted to take that from them. Why?
“Because she’s an empty shell of a human being. And a bitch,” Eva reminded herself.
Her phone rang, and she welcomed the distraction when she saw Eden’s name on the screen.
“Hey, what’s up?” she answered.
“Uh. Hi,” Eden said. She sounded stilted, and Eva heard the sound of a door closing. “Hey, listen. I have a woman here at the B&B who says she’s a friend of yours.”
Eva swallowed hard. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Eden said. “She said her name is Agnes and that you’d be paying for her room?” Eva could hear the edge of unasked questions in Eden’s voice.
Mother fucker. “She did, did she?” Eva asked.
“She was pretty adamant about it,” Eden admitted. “If she’s not a friend like she says, I’d be happy to get rid of her.”
Eva could only imagine the consequences. “No. It’s fine. We’re, uh, distant acquaintances. I’m just helping her out. Temporarily.” Paying for a hotel room was different than shelling out ten grand, she rationalized. “Let me give you my credit card number.”
“Are you sure?” Eden asked.
“Yeah. Yeah. But listen, if you don’t mind, I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone about this. Like anyone at all.”
“I’m an innkeeper. I keep everyone’s dirt.”
“Remind me to get you drunk sometime and dig into all that dirt,” Eva joked.
“Ha.”
Eva read off her card information.
Eden thanked her. “Okay. I gotta go. I just wanted to check that this was all kosher. And if you come visit your… acquaintance, stop by and say hi.”
Oh, Eva would be stopping by all right. And she’d be dragging Agnes out of there and tossing her out on her skinny ass.