My Year of Courting Disaster: A novela

By Danelle Hall

A stowaway on Mandy's book tour turns a simple trip from point A to point B into a race for survival. Somebody wants Mandy's good friend Earlene and doesn't care how he gets her.
Mandy, former wife, government documents librarian, and the mother of two troublesome adult children, survived a year in a yurt and wrote a book about it. She survived the problems brought on by sudden wealth and the kidnapping of her daughter. Now she has to survive her book tour.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543997132

Book preview

26

CHAPTER 1         

Julia’s voice on the telephone is high pitched and frantic, nothing like the calm, no nonsense friend I’ve known for so many years. I know she’s imparting information, but mixed as it is with hysterical weeping and a fury that would outdo anything I’ve ever felt, I’m finding it hard to follow. I need Tom to calm her down so I can learn what has happened. He’s my current reason for living here in the middle of nowhere as well as our county’s sheriff. He’s used to dealing with difficult problems.

Before I can say Hold on Julia, let me get Tom, she shrieks, I’ll kill him. I swear I will.

On second thought, maybe Tom shouldn’t be involved.

Calm down, Julia. Deep breath.

I hear her suck in a deep breath and then she whimpers, Can I come stay with you, Mandy? Just for a little while?

Of course she could if I were going to be here. But I’m not going to be here.

Uh … Julia.

I wouldn’t bother you. I’d stay out of your way. Quiet as a mouse.

Yeah right. Uh … Julia.

If I have to stay here in this house by myself, I’ll go crazy. Or kill myself.

Julia, slow down. Start at the beginning and tell me what’s going on.

I got this letter.

Okay.

Actually it was in a birthday card envelope.

I look at the black cat wall clock with the twitching tail where I’m inhaling my first cup of coffee of the morning. My own internal anxiety is increasing with each twitch of the tail that marks another chunk of time I don’t have.

I shouldn’t have opened it, but … well, Arnold’s in Amarillo and the handwriting looked like a woman’s handwriting and, well, I wish I hadn’t opened it, but I did.

"Who was it from?

Some woman named Charlotte. The woman’s name sparks another wave of hiccuping sobs.

Do you know anyone named Charlotte?

No.

Could she be one of Arnold’s clients?

She decorated the letter with squirrelly squiggly hearts any place on the letter that it didn’t hide her words.

Arnold? Chubby Care Bear Arnold?

Having an affair?

With a woman who decorates her letter with squiggly hearts?

I’m tempted to laugh, but Julia is still on the phone and her shrill voice hurts my ears and my heart, and her hiccuping sobbing makes me want to start crying right along with her.

Have you confronted Arnold with the letter? My voice is quivering now.

No.

I take a deep breath and swallow. Why not?

He’s in Amarillo. I’m here.

Here" being Oklahoma City.

All right, Dr. Mandy, what words of wisdom can you pull up from your own divorce. I don’t think she’ll go for It may be the best thing that could happen to you. In her mind, my nerdy, careful accountant Arnold is already the best thing that ever happened or could happen to her and she doesn’t want to lose him.

Uh, Julia, I start and then stop. I can’t do this. I only have two hours until Harlan arrives to whisk me away on my very first book tour. I haven’t packed. I’ve barely collected the materials I’ll have to have for the tour.

But I have to take time with Julia. She’s my best friend, my very best friend in the world except for Tom and she’s having a nervous breakdown.

And threatening murder.

Just when I’m leaving on a book tour.

I hope this isn’t a cosmic sign of things to come.

My name is Amanda Riley, but I prefer to be called Mandy. When my twenty-year plus marriage imploded a couple of years ago, thanks to rat bastard ex-husband Roger’s fling at The Office Motel, I lived for a year in a yurt not far from Carson Corners and wrote a book about the experience.

Bad choice and good choice.

Bad choice because my editor, Edgar, now wants me to go on a book tour to publicize the book that grew out of that year.

Good choice because I met Sheriff Tom Lennon.

Tom is my hero, my lover, possibly even my future if I can ever get off the fence and trust again, not something I can just make up my mind to do and then do it. It’s something that has to grow over time. 

My hero wanders from our bedroom just then in shorts and a sleeveless undershirt, his eyes bleary and only half open, his tawny hair punk spiked in different directions. By now, the sun is up and the morning light pours in through the window over the sink. The new lemon yellow curtains that I hung yesterday instead of packing add to the intense morning glow of the room. Tom squints and rubs his hand over his morning stubble.

Phone?

Since Tom isn’t a morning person, and since I’m not a morning person either, minimalist sentences are the extent of what we can manage before noon. Sometimes Tom and I don’t say anything. A nod or a look may be enough for a complete conversation. We spend much of our time together just looking at each other and grinning.

Phone? I look from him to the cell phone I’ve just moved from my ear.

Phone? he asks again as he gets his first cup of coffee of the morning.

Julia.

Hi, Julia, he calls as he sits down across from me. Packed?

I cross my fingers and nod.

Phone numbers?

I nod again. I don’t want to face it but Harlan will be here before I can possibly be ready. And Julia is hyperventilating on the other end of the phone connection.

For a moment, my mind is a total blank on how to handle this. The ticking clock sounds unnaturally loud as I pick up the cell phone where my friend is waiting for a solution to her devastation.

Let me call you back in a minute, Julia. We’ll think of something.

Tom waits for me to explain. She thinks Arnold is having an affair.

Arnold? Tom’s face registers astonishment, then concern, then he laughs. Arnold? He doesn’t have to put his astonishment into words, it’s all there in that one word, Arnold.

Okay. Julia’s probably jumping to conclusions when she should wad the letter and toss it.

I have a book tour facing me.

Harlan. Probably on his way here already. Drat.

Book tour.

Carton of books in box by front door.

Clothes to wear on book tour. Still in the dryer. First stop.

I get up and hug Tom. No gun or sheriff’s badge yet, just sleepy, lovable man. I open the back door for Dog, a Golden Retriever-Chow mix who adopted me during my yurt days. He cocks his mismatched ears at me as if to say, You still here? and bumps my hand with a cold nose.

The short term solution to Julia’s pain pops into my head. I return to the table, hit redial on my cell phone and wait until I hear hiccups and sniffling on the other end of the line.

Can you meet us in Albuquerque?

CHAPTER 2         

I don’t like surprises. I know many people do, but I’m not one of them.

Harlan’s surprise should have been a deal breaker only I don’t have time for a deal breaker. I’m on a very short clock to make it to Albuquerque and my early morning radio show, the first event scheduled on my book tour.

We should have left on this expedition yesterday.

My editor Edgar was supposed to take the lead on this project and accompany me. I’m still not sure what was going on when he called.

Sorry, Mandy. Something has come up.

What do you mean something has come up. You’re my driver, my motel room provider, my go-fer. If you can’t come, I’ll reschedule. Or you can reschedule.

We can’t do that. The arrangements are all made, motel rooms reserved. Travel money, names, telephone numbers should have arrived.

Yes, I have his large envelope with everything I’ll ever need to know about the damned tour.

Everything’s arranged and paid for, he continues. We can’t reschedule.

Then tell me what’s going on. My voice is beginning to get that screetching sound in it that I hate.

It’s a family thing, Edgar mumbles. Edgar never mumbles. He loud and pushy and a total pain.

What family thing?

Not your problem, Mandy. Sorry. And the sound of Edgar hanging up his land line echos finality.

After Edgar’s wimp-out, I considered my friend Julia but she and Arnold were just settling into their new marriage, so she wasn’t available. Only now it seems she might be.

My son David couldn’t get off work for the three weeks I’ll be on the road. Tom couldn’t help because he doesn’t have enough deputies to cover the county without him. The county still hasn’t funded another deputy position. I’d hire the new deputy myself, but Tom doesn’t think I should call attention to the inheritance my friend Hannah left me.

So Harlan drew the short straw.

Harlan Smith is a friend from my year in the yurt when I lived north of Carson Corners. A wizard with cars and anything mechanical, he’s kept every old wreck in the county running like silk since he showed up seven or eight years ago in the middle of the night on a Yamaha chopper.

Harlan has just arrived with his surprise in the back seat of his car, almost hidden by luggage and a cold box. Earlene Throckmorton, Carson Corners’ very own postmistress, smiles at me and waves.

A baseball hat controls her hair and large sunglasses with heavy tortoise-shell frames hide her face. There is a folded quilt on top of the cold box on the seat beside her, obviously for her to snuggle under if she gets cold, or hide under, should that become necessary.

Hi, Mandy, Earlene says. Her voice is perky, her body language anxious.

Hi, Earlene, I say but I’m looking at Harlan.

He is suddenly busy with the gauges on the dash. He reaches down and releases the hood, then goes to the front of the car and raises the hood, all without looking at me.

I turn back to Earlene.

Harlan is going to drop me off in Dos Sombreros. She smiles again or grimaces, and removes her sunglasses.

My brain scrambles to think where, between here and Albuquerque is there a town called Dos Sombreros. Two Hats?

I won’t be any trouble at all, Earlene assures me. I just need to see my sister.

We should have left yesterday. Heaven help me if we have car trouble. And now we’re adding in a side trip? 

While I consider this new wrinkle in a tight schedule, I realize that I’m shocked by Harlan’s dapper appearance, even half buried in the front of the car as he is. He has always been a bit disheveled and casual about his clothing. The only things I’ve seen him wear are grease-laden coveralls, or Levis with a western style shirt. So I’m stunned to see him in a gray silk suit with polished shoes, his hair neatly trimmed, and sporting a short beard. I would not have recognized him had I passed him in the street.

Ready? Harlan reaches in the back of the car and pulls out a roll of paper towels. Even his voice sounds different. When I take my car to him, or even back when he visited me in the yurt, he’s always soft spoken, almost diffident in his manner, peering up at me from under a ducked head.

Now he moves with an odd grace, his head held high. He meets my eyes straight on. No sign of the shy, grease smeared mechanic, except for his now smudged suit. Even his fingernails look newly manicured. No black embedded gunk giving away his occupation. What’s going on here?

Harlan, you look very … nice.

Don’t be fooled by the wrapping, Mandy.

Nice … wrapping. I gesture toward his suit.

Yeah, well … You ready?

Yes.

No, I’m not ready. How can I go off and leave Tom, this man I’m just beginning to know? I’ll never be ready. From the open doorway, I can hear him in the bedroom behind me, moving around, preparing for his shift. And what am I going to do about Julia. She can’t be left on her own, feeling the way she’s feeling. I’ve offered a short-term solution if she’ll do it.

Those your bags? Harlan steps past me and picks up the first of my two hastily packed suitcases, rolls it out and puts it in the trunk of the car. I follow with the other bag, every fiber in my body yearning to stay here and forget this nonsense. All Tom would have to do is say, ‘Mandy, don’t go,’ and I wouldn’t. I’d unpack and stay right here and make chicken fried steak for dinner.

Supper.

Out here the last meal of the day is called supper …

Just one of the many details I’ve had to learn. I’m a city girl, born and bred, except for three years when I was eight, nine and ten, and my father played at being a rancher. I close my mouth, close my eyes. Focus, Mandy.  Who cares whether it’s called dinner or supper …

You’ve got this to do. So do it.

The book tour.

The last Harlan surprise finally registers. Harlan is driving a white Lincoln Town Car. Granted it’s several years old, but still … 

I thought we were going in my powder blue Toyota pickup.

I thought I was finished with my book too when I fired it off to Editor Edgar. Just goes to show … something.

A Lincoln Town Car will certainly be more comfortable considering my ‘surprise’ in the back seat. And if Julia joins us …

Edgar has scheduled this dog and pony show to publicize my book in hundreds of small towns across my region of the country. Well, maybe not hundreds. I think the actual number is somewhere around fourteen including the Arkansas Library Association annual meeting in early September.

Sounds like a blast. Right?

Edgar is, unfortunately, persistent like chewing gum on your shoe, or the stain on the front of your favorite tee shirt.

So, I’m doing a book tour—leaving my