Nowhere but Home A Novel - By Liza Palmer Page 0,18

Merry Carole was branded a gold-digging harlot, just like her mother, and Whitney took her rightful place as the long-suffering Lady of the McKay Manor. Merry Carole vowed never to make the mistake of trusting a man again.

“I hear West is doing well,” Merry Carole offers, her voice painfully anxious. I settle into my stance, waiting to hear what Whitney will say of her “little brother,” West Ackerman. West Ackerman was born just months after Cal. Coincidentally, West looks exactly like Whitney and Wes. Yet she’s passed him off as her “little brother” for years. Whitney and her parents spent a year at her grandparents’ house in Houston before West’s birth. And oh, look at that, her postmenopausal mother brought back a little surprise! Even West’s name is a blend of the two actual parents’ names! But this is a lie North Star allows. The Ackermans are a respected family who wouldn’t dare be deceitful, whereas the Wakes are just a bunch of slobbering animals.

“West is the pride of North Star and of the Ackerman family name. He’s got quite an arm, and he can catch,” Whitney says, tucking her compact back into her purse. It dawns on me that West Ackerman is probably the kid Cal was talking about this morning. Of course he is. It makes sense that the powers that be in this town would want West to take over the quarterback position made famous by his father. Of course, Wes McKay is Cal’s father, too. The citizens of North Star seem to keep conveniently forgetting that.

During Whitney and Merry Carole’s little banter, everything comes rushing back. I can’t believe I was so naive. There is no coming back to North Star on my own terms. I may be older and wiser, but we are still the villains. We are still the unwanted. We are still the ones parents point to and warn, “Don’t brush your teeth and you’ll end up like poor Merry Carole and Queenie Wake. Let a boy get to second base and you’ll end up like poor Merry Carole and Queenie Wake. Cheat on that final and you’ll end up like poor Merry Carole and Queenie Wake.” Being Brandi-Jaques Wake’s daughters means being branded a pariah.

We are North Star’s very own bogeymen.

I hate that Cal has been dragged into all this history. He seems unaffected by it. Although I know from personal experience that outward appearances can be deceiving. Take right now, for instance. I look as though I haven’t a care in the world. My face wears a breezy smile. My entire body is a testament to the yogic pose mountain—balanced and rooted to the earth. I sigh and breathe as if I’m not about to explode across this room and rip Laurel’s hair out while screaming, “YOU STOLE MY MAN, YOU SOULLESS BITCH!” at the top of my lungs. Nope. I am a practice in calm. I breathe in for the first time in minutes, hours maybe. I snap out of my trance. Laurel’s eyes are still fixed on me. I love it. I love that I’ve always gotten under her perfectly moisturized alabaster skin. I steady my breathing—like a sniper focusing his target in the crosshairs.

“We’d better get going. I’ve got to get supper on the table for Wes and the kids,” Whitney says with a particularly giddy undertone.

“Great seeing you guys! See you at the Fourth of July festival!” Merry Carole calls out as they leave the salon.

The door closes. I begin to speak—

“Don’t say a word, Queen Elizabeth. Not. One. Word,” Merry Carole says, retreating to the bathroom.

The bathroom door slams behind her.

6

The Number One

Mom ran her restaurant out of an eight-by-eight-foot shack connected to the Drinkers Hall of Fame, the one bar in town. The restaurant was an old storage shed on a small corner plot of land and the only thing the Wake family ever owned. Almost as an afterthought, Mom nailed a board by the take-out window with the word WAKE branded into it. She kept the same hours as the bar and her entire staff consisted of Fawn, Merry Carole, and me. No matter what anyone in North Star thought of my mom, everyone agreed on one thing: she was the best cook in the Texas Hill Country. She was known for her barbecue and fried pies. But she was most famous for one particular dish. The dish people would drive hundreds of miles for was simply called the Number One. I imagine Momma