been tacky, but the renderings were so artistically achieved she wanted to bite into one in the worst way. She walked around long worktables, looking up at a clothesline, where she recognized Charlotte’s handiwork hanging in bedazzled display. Another table held various bottles of oils that glistened in the bright light, each with labels specifying some kind of unearthly delight associated with the use of the sparkling liquid. “Oh my God. You three are crazy.”
They looked at her.
“Not crazy in the medical sense,” Lucy said hurriedly, realizing she might have erred. “I can’t believe the three of you are running home businesses catering to the pleasure side of life. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. What’s my role?”
They beamed. “Charlotte says you’re a hard worker,” Dodie said. “We decided that if we pooled our resources and hid our businesses down here, no one would ever find out. And we want you to be our secret helper!”
Lucy looked at Charlotte. “Wouldn’t that violate the wishes of the wicked witch?”
“No,” Charlotte said. “You’ll be down here with us. Vivian won’t see you riding up to my house, and what she doesn’t know won’t condemn us. Vivian won’t know where our secret location is. She thinks we’re all still operating out of our kitchens and parlors. But it was getting cramped, and we’re all in a growth phase. We need help we can trust.”
“And you want me to keep your sexy secrets.” Lucy walked around the tables one more time, checking out the wares. “Well, I need a job, and the only other thing I figured I could do was have a phone-sex business.”
They drew back as if she’d struck them, blinking at her with horrified bright eyes. “Did I say something wrong?”
“Dear child,” Charlotte said, “that would be dirty. Unseemly. It just isn’t done in polite circles.”
Lucy gazed around at the lovely chocolate boobs and ornate penises, the jeweled man mittens, and the sex potions designed to make Aphrodite scream with mind-bending pleasure. “Oh, I get it. No talking about s-e-x.”
They beamed at her, suddenly the smartest student in the room. Lucy glowed under their approbation. “I get it. Thank you for the opportunity of working for your estimable businesses. I’m pleased to accept your offer of employment, and may the profit be with us.”
They shook on it, and that was how Lucy Cassavechia knew she finally fit into the fabric of Pecan Creek.
She had found her calling.
Sex. Ladylike and calm, and always on the down low.
Maggie swung in the hammock lazily, enjoying the late September sunshine and the warmth of Lassiter’s big body against her back. “I love it here.”
“I love you here,” Lassiter told her, kissing her temple. Tiny white puffy clouds scudded overhead. Mockingbirds sang their copycat calls, beautiful and haunting, in the overgrown, native live oak trees. Maggie didn’t think she’d ever been this happy, except when her daughters were born.
“Do you ever tell them where you are?”
“No,” Maggie said, settling more comfortably against his chest. “Sugar’s too busy with her business and with Jake and what she calls the gang of good ol’ boys. And I don’t really know what Lucy does. I think she’s working at the library. Whatever it is, she seems very happy.”
“Not as happy as I am to have you all to myself.”
Maggie was happy too. The only problem marring her happiness was that she felt like she’d deserted Sugar’s fledgling business. But she had nothing to contribute, because she simply couldn’t recall a single ingredient properly. As the days went on, and she became more worried, the recipes became jumbled in her mind. The day she realized she was adding ingredients from her father’s favorite chili recipe to the list for her grandmother’s famous pecans, Maggie gave up.
She didn’t dare tell Sugar that the dream was over.
The very thought made her so sad she wanted to cry. Sugar had brought them all the way here to start over, to help Maggie recuperate and get well. But there wasn’t anything to start—no business, no anything—because Maggie couldn’t remember.
She was not being a supportive mother, which she’d so badly wanted to be this time. “I’m supposed to be keeping a journal,” Maggie said. “But I don’t ever write in it.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Maggie began. She sighed. “I don’t know. I think I don’t care. Coming here wasn’t my dream. It was what Sugar thought was best. And I understood that. But I don’t want to write about it.”
“Well,” Lassiter said, “I’m not a very good writer myself.”
“I knew