From the Author

      Dear Reader,

      When we’re kids, we dream of being all kinds of things when we grow up—from president of the United States to the scientist who cures cancer, from being an Oscar-winning actress to being a major trendsetter.

      Then we grow up. We don’t stop dreaming, but we learn some realism, and give up the dreams that we know are just too impossible.

      I’m a believer that good people should get what’s coming to them. Maybe the meek and gentle don’t always inherit the earth, but darn it, there should be some payback for all the people who wake up every morning just trying to be good people, good lovers, good parents, good friends.

      It ticks me off mightily when this doesn’t happen.

      So I created this story…about two women who’d put on their realistic grown-up lives and never gave their old dreams another thought. About two women who keep getting put down for having extraordinarily good hearts. About two women who deserve a lot more than jewels and gems.

      But after I gave them the jewels, I tried to give them something else. Something that mattered a lot more.

      I hope you like this story!

      All my best,

      Jennifer Greene

      To Jennifer—

       I keep trying, but no heroine I’ve ever created comes close to you. I want to be you when I grow up. Love, Mom

      Contents

      PROLOGUE

      CHAPTER 1

      CHAPTER 2

      CHAPTER 3

      CHAPTER 4

      CHAPTER 5

      CHAPTER 6

      CHAPTER 7

      CHAPTER 8

      CHAPTER 9

      CHAPTER 10

      CHAPTER 11

      CHAPTER 12

      CHAPTER 13

      CHAPTER 14

      EPILOGUE

      PROLOGUE

      Just as Maude Rose glanced at the kitchen clock, she felt a sudden fierce tightening in her chest. She ignored it. She wasn’t a woman to cater to pain, never had been. More to the point, it was finally past eleven. The bars wouldn’t serve liquor until noon, but by the time she got her old butt in gear, the time’d be close enough.

      She was already wearing her favorite caftan—the purple with the gold and green threads. The slippers were an elegant satin green, not exactly perfect for walking in a September drizzle, but hell, she couldn’t fit any other shoes over her hammertoes anymore anyway.

      She made up her face, patting a pretty circle of rouge on each cheek, then slathering on a bright, cheerful lavender lipstick. She just couldn’t seem to manage coloring her hair anymore—these last couple months, her arthritis had been a blinger—so her hair seemed to be two-tone these days. Half orange, half white. Truth to tell, she kind of liked it. She swept it up in an elegant style, give or take.

      For a finishing touch, of course, she added jewelry. A good pound of gold and silver around her neck and then sparkles of all kinds on her wrists and fingers.

      The only place to hide a secret, Maude thought, was in plain sight. Everybody knew that. The kicker in Righteous, Virginia, was that nobody realized that Maude Rose knew that, too.

      On the other hand, there were only two women in this town worth sharing a secret with.

      She grabbed her cane, let herself out the apartment front door and paused to light a cigar. That feeling of a sharp, tight fist in her chest came back to haunt her, but she determined to ignore it. The pain would go away. Or it wouldn’t. Same with all the other aches and pains that a girl her age was stuck with.

      She set out. Predictable as taxes, heads showed up in windows as she passed. Lots of people in Righteous took daily pleasure in sniffing their noses at her. Maude Rose didn’t make friends, didn’t have friends. Truth was that nobody had been in her corner since Bobby Ray died, and that was better than twenty years ago. He’d stood up for her, taken her out of The Life.

      Once he’d died, that was that. It was back to loneliness again. Just as well, since anybody she’d ever needed had let her down anyway. There always seemed somebody dying to judge her. It had taken her years to figure out that the way of handling the judgers was to let them. Flaunt what they thought they knew right in their faces.

      She passed by Righteous Elementary School—which was right next to Righteous Academy. Kids scrambled all over the playground in spite of the steady drizzle coming down. Both schools had turned her down when she’d offered to volunteer. A teacher looked protectively at her clutch of kids when Maude passed. The little twit.

      Past the schools, she eased her cane over the curb, flicked her cigar ash, took another long pull and then headed upstream. The newspaper, Our Way, was housed on the next block. She didn’t glance at the newspaper office, hadn’t ever since they’d refused to print any more of her letters to the editor. This wasn’t exactly a town that was pro-choice or tolerant of gays—or, for that matter, appreciated hearing that the mayor needed the shit kicked out of him. Righteous was a place that wrapped its personality around its name.

      A dozen times Maude Rose had considered leaving, but now it was too late. And anyhow, it was home. She passed by Marcella’s Expert Hair Salon—another place she used to go all the time. Now she did her own. When she got around to it, anyway. She hadn’t stepped foot in there again,