Friends with Secrets: A Novel by Christine Gunderson

Author:Christine Gunderson [Gunderson, Christine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2024-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Seven

AINSLEY

They left the antique shops and bed-and-breakfasts of St. Marie and headed deeper into rural Maryland, beyond mast-filled marinas and crab fisherman motoring through the water in long, low-slung boats. The GPS told them to take a right at West Marine, but it wasn’t necessary. Ainsley knew the way.

She and Nikki drove another ten miles and took a left, and the landscape changed again. Farther from the water now, with smaller houses.

They entered the western edge of Badwater. Her nose wrinkled as the familiar rotten-egg smell rose from the nearby sulfur spring. The first Americans had gotten it right when they named the town.

The only people who lived here were people who couldn’t afford to live anywhere else.

Her soul turned a little gray as she glanced out the window and saw the landscape of her childhood.

The entrance to the gravel pit. The dilapidated chain-link fence that only partially enclosed Skelly Monroe’s Salvage Yard. And up ahead, the drunken wrought iron sign announcing the entrance to the People’s Court. It had originally been designed as a sort of dignified arch, like those sometimes built at the entrance to a cemetery.

But for geological reasons no one fully understood, the left pillar had for many years been sinking into the ground, while the right pillar remained where it should be, making THE PEOPLE’S almost a foot lower than COURT.

She hadn’t been here in almost twenty years, and still no one had fixed that . . . damn . . . sign. Or maybe they were just waiting for her to come back and do it herself.

Ainsley gripped the steering wheel. Of all the trailer parks in all the world . . . Harmonee’s mother had to come back to the People’s Court. And drag Ainsley back with her.

She drove under the arch, pulled into an empty lot, and stopped the car.

“Are you okay?” Nikki asked. “You seem a little . . . tense.”

“I grew up here.”

The quiet whish of warm air pumping through the vents filled the car. Once again, she had managed to render her friend the professional spokeswoman speechless.

“Okay.”

Ainsley gripped her keys. “You don’t need to say anything.”

Because what could her friend possibly say? Does the rotten-egg smell come with the house, or do you pay extra for that? Or It must be so convenient being next to a salvage yard, in case you run out of hubcaps.

“Okay.”

“I’ll do the talking,” Ainsley said.

“Okay.” Nikki nodded.

They got out of the car and walked down the gravel road leading to the center of the trailer court. The deep, frustrated bray of a hound who could smell people approaching without being free to run out and examine them echoed down the street. Other dogs joined his vocal protest, and Ainsley could see curtains twitching as people looked out to see who approached.

Car doors slammed and lights came on inside the trailers as people returned home from work and school. A group of children played on an ancient steel swing set embedded in the

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