Page 44 of Grinch Girl

“I wanted to say no,” she admitted. “But Jesus, that ad is so shitty.”

Shitty it was, and it sure sounded like Angela.

Greta, her mother, had lived in Falworth her entire life and loved it, but Angela hated her modest roots. As one of the area’s leading real estate agents, she consistently counseled her buyers against investing in “Falling Worth” properties, even though they were more affordable and still close to the lake. Her own daughter was participating in the web series, yet she’d still labeled it “trash.”

“Have you talked to her lately?” Bella asked.

I laughed. “I waited on her during a business lunch at the resort over the summer, but I’m not sure her order of grilled walleye counts as talking. As you well know, we don’t move in the same social circles,” I said.

Bella flinched. Those were the exact words Angela had offered to Greta when my mom and I weren’t invited to her wedding. Even though we’d all lived together for years. Even though I was her daughter’s best friend and my mother had been a close friend to Angela. Temporarily, anyway.

To use one of her favorite words, we were too trashy. Then and now.

“I saw Aunt Kelly last week,” Bella said suddenly. “She looks great.”

I glared at her. Yes, my mom did look great. Not that it had anything to do with Bella taking her to lunch or still calling her aunt or sending her birthday cards or any of the other things she’d done over the years to maintain their relationship. Things I determinedly ignored.

Nate opened his door and got out of the car before I could respond. “J-Bird,” he said casually. As if we’d never tried to inhale one another standing up. As if he’d never seen me cry about my post-seizure dog.

“Hey.” I tried to be offhand and casual, but I failed miserably. I was too twitchy and I didn’t make eye contact and there was a weird, scratchy quiver in my throat.

Nate didn’t seem to notice—but Bella did. She looked between Nate’s face and mine, carefully, and then her lips folded in a cute smirk and she raised one meaningful eyebrow at me.Shut up, Bells.

“I’m here because Carol insisted, but I probably shouldn’t go in there with you,” I said. Angela and her snotty cohorts would take my presence as aggressive and antagonistic as opposed to reasonable and professional. And they would be right.

“OK.” She squared her shoulders and bit her full bottom lip. “Here goes nothing.” I watched her elegant stride and wished I didn’t notice how stiff she was. Wished I didn’t feel a sympathy ache in my stomach.

“What is with all the moody undertones today?” Nate asked. “You two are just a bundle of complex emotional subtext that I can’t read. It’s driving me nuts. I know the facts of what’s happening, but I have no idea what’sactuallyhappening.”

He took a step toward me, and I swallowed. One more step and I’d be able to feel the warmth of his body. “Care to fill me in?” he asked.

“Sure.” It wasn’t something I talked about, but I needed something, anything, to make me act normal around him, and the backstory of Bella and me was nothing if not a mood killer.

I folded my arms over my chest and leaned back against my car. “Imagine, if you will, a hot summer night almost thirty-three years ago.” I pointed east, toward the lakefront. “A huge party on the beach. High school students drinking from a keg. Some of them from the local high schools, some of them tourists.”

Nate leaned back against Bella’s car and smiled at me. “All right. Go on.”

I waved my hand as if conjuring a scene in the air between us. “Picture two fifteen-year-old girls from Falworth. One was blond and blue-eyed, a JV cheerleader and on the regional academic decathlon team. One was dark-haired and dark-eyed, with poor grades and a penchant for cutting class to smoke weed.”

Nate nodded. “Sounds like they were pretty different young women.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “But at this particular party, they both made the same mistake and suffered the same consequence.”

“You’re quite the storyteller, J-Bird.” Nate gave me his flirtatious grin with the flash of teeth. My stomach muscles clenched. “What was this mistake?”

“They both got drunk, each had sex with a different boy from out of town, and got pregnant,” I said bluntly.

Nate blinked and the flirtation disappeared. “Oh.”

“Oh indeed.” I shrugged. “Not the most original story, but…”

“What happened next?” he asked.

“The blonde, Angela, was lucky. Although her father had passed away when she was young, her mother, Greta, loved her and accepted that sometimes young women make mistakes. That they shouldn’t be ostracized or punished. She believed you could make sacrifices, find solutions, and life could go on for everyone.” I cleared my throat. Would I always miss Greta thisdang much? Or would the pain fade month by month? Which outcome was worse?

“Kelly, the dark-haired girl, was not as lucky. Her parents were ultra-religious in the most hypocritical way. They kicked their daughter out of the house when they found out about the pregnancy.” Maybe my voice would have turned bitter if I’d ever met my biological grandparents. But they’d never spoken to my mom after kicking her out, and they both died when I was in grade school.

“Being knocked up in high school is pretty humiliating,” I went on. “Everyone gossips about you, and some people start avoiding you. Although Angela and Kelly weren’t friends before, their shared condition forged a close friendship. When Angela’s mother found out what Kelly’s mother had done, she invited Kelly to move in with them.”

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