Which didn’t take long.
And because I’ve never been able to tell my niece no, I let her come with me to pick out a collar and harness before I’d even taken the little thing to the vet.
He’d been abandoned once, but it wouldn’t happen again.
We’d never been able to prove anything, but Chip had appeared around the same time that a group of college kids landed in Magnolia Point on vacation. Everyone had tried to catch him as he wandered around town.
Except me.
I had no interest in chasing the damn thing in the blazing heat, and that was my downfall. Because the little pink pig with the black spots had wandered in and made himself at home in the garage and in my life.
“Guess you need to find another way,” Phoenix says, startling me from my trip down memory lane.
“What?”
He chuckles as he stands. “Cora. You said she makes it impossible and I said…”
“I need to find another way.”
“If you want to, that is,”—he smirks—“and itdefinitelyseems like you want to.”
I wave him off because damn straight I want to.
I just need to figure out a way to get her alone for five minutes when she’s not trying to cut my balls off for looking at her wrong. My lips twitch because she’s hot as hell when she’s murderous, and I can’t wait to put all her pent-up rage to good use.
7
[Social Media Post from the Taste of Magnolia Food Truck]
(Picture of the truck)
The Taste of Magnolia had her paint touched up thanks to @aspengreene and it looks amazing! Tell us what you think and one person will receive a free smoothie with their order!
#supportlocal #tasteofmagnolia #magnoliapoint
Unknown: How embarrassing you have to hand out drinks to get anyone to show up
8
CORA
My tired footsteps are nearly silent as I climb the stained wood steps to the massive wraparound porch. The white painted colonial is classic—idyllic—and finallymine.The porch swing sways gently, and I can’t help the smile that graces my lips.
I’d sat on it for hours growing up, my grandfather joining me with a cool drink and a snack from the kitchen. We’d talk about his childhood and mine, the things he’d seen and then things I hoped to see one day.
Those quiet moments were my favorite and most cherished memories of this place. They were all I had when I’d left to live with my father. My mother’s betrayal following my grandfather’s death and the years after had caused indescribable pain that had only started to fade since being back here.
Like I was coming home not just to a place but tohim.The man with wrinkles on his face from years of being in the sun and laughing every chance he got, the man who’d taught me how to do the jitterbug in the kitchen and never missed an opportunity to tell me how proud he was of me.
He’d been a balm to my mother’s cruelty. Back then I didn’t understand it, but as an adult I could see her jealousy for what it was. Instead of loving me—protecting me—she had done everything to tear me down. Her constant remarks about my appearance, I could ignore, but the way she’d tried to taint my grandfather’s memory was unforgivable.
“You didn’t really think he’d leave the house to you, did you?”
That question had haunted me for years, her voice a sickeningly sweet taunt because I had thought that he would have left me the house.
And she made me believe he hadn’t.
She’d made everyone believe it—selling off the things she didn’t want from his home before moving herself in while I left town to live with my father.
