“I’ve only been workin’ here a few weeks,” Nicky said.

“Stayin’ awhile?” Frank glanced at the single suitcase Nicky was removing from the back seat of the car. “Or is this just an overnight trip?”

“I’m stayin’ for a long time,” Jennie Sue answered.

“That’s good. Place seems empty without you.” Frank got into the Caddy and fired up the engine. “Your daddy will be real glad that you’re here for his birthday bash. It’s comin’ up in a few weeks.”

“I’ll be here.” Jennie Sue waved as he drove away.

Mabel bustled out of the kitchen and across the living room floor, grabbed Jennie Sue in a bear hug, and kissed both her cheeks. A short woman who was almost as wide as she was tall, she wore her gray hair in a tight little bun at the nape of her neck. Frank had always been like a grandfather to Jennie Sue, and his wife, Mabel, had been a nanny and surrogate grandmother all rolled into one. “Darlin’ girl, if I’d known you was comin’, I would have made apricot fried pies for you.”

“Whatever you are cookin’ right now smells delicious. I’m starving. Haven’t had anything but a package of cheese crackers all mornin’. Is that fried chicken?”

“Yes, and this chicken had four extra legs,” Mabel teased.

“You used to tell me that all the time when I was a little girl.” Jennie Sue hugged her a second time.

Charlotte set her lips in a firm line. “She doesn’t need pies or fried foods, for God’s sake. She’s gained at least ten pounds since we saw her in New York last Christmas. We’ll have to work hard on getting those off. So she’ll have a salad with no more than a quarter cup of smoked salmon on the top and low-fat dressing.”

“She hates salmon.” Mabel winked at her. “So how about a side salad and a couple of chicken legs? You do still like drumsticks, right?”

“That sounds amazing. So Daddy is having lunch here today?” Jennie Sue asked.

“I am. Welcome home.” Dill stepped into the foyer and opened his arms. “Don’t get to see my baby girl often enough. Did you come home for my birthday?”

“Of course she did.” Charlotte perked right up. “She’s going to help me plan it, and we’ll have family pictures made.”

That gave her mother the perfect excuse, Jennie Sue thought as she walked into her father’s arms. The story of why she was home could also have something to do with her dad’s birthday. He smelled like bourbon and expensive aftershave, but what was that scent on his shirt? It sure wasn’t her mother’s Lalique perfume, but then, he probably didn’t buy the expensive stuff for his mistresses, since he changed them more often than Charlotte did Cadillacs—and that was once a year.

When she was a little girl, he’d been on a pedestal so high that he disappeared into the clouds. And then came junior high school, when she found out about his affairs from a couple of students who were whispering in the girls’ bathroom at school about what they’d heard from their mothers. The pedestal came crashing down. She still loved him—after all, he was her daddy, and he was so charming. But a part of her heart had never forgiven him and most likely never would.

“Glad you got home in time to eat with me, darlin’. I’ve got to go to Houston after lunch, but I’ll be home day after tomorrow for the Fourth of July party. How’d you get here? Flight into Dallas or Amarillo? You should have called. I’d have been glad to fly up to New York and get you.” He draped an arm around her shoulders and led her to the dining room.

When Dill walked into a room, every woman in the place needed suspenders to keep her panties from sneaking down around her ankles. With a light frosting of gray hair at his temples and those crystal-clear blue eyes, tight jeans, high-dollar boots, and a belt buckle as big as his ego, he was a force to be reckoned with. Throw in all that beautiful oil money and he had his pick of young mistresses whenever he wanted to make a change.

Jennie Sue wondered who the newest one was as she watched him pull out a chair for Charlotte. When she was living in New York, she didn’t have to think about the secrets in the Baker household—secrets that had turned her into an introvert in high school—but they all hit her smack in the face when she stepped through that front door.

Dill seated Jennie Sue, too, before taking his place at the head of the table. “So why didn’t you let us know you were flying home?”

“I came by bus, Daddy, because it was cheaper and it gave me a lot of time to think. I really did want to be here for Mama’s birthday and for yours. And”—she inhaled deeply and let it out slowly—“I need a job. Think you might find me one in the firm?”

Dill eyed her carefully. “You have an apartment, a car, and very good alimony from that son of a bitch who left you. Why do you need a job?”

“That’s what I thought, too, when I signed the divorce papers. But about a month ago, the IRS audited his company and found a lot of fraud and possibly some money laundering. So a couple of weeks ago he stole a bag of diamonds from the company and disappeared with one of his girlfriends. The government stepped in last week and took everything from me. I really, really need a job.”

“Honey.” He patted her on the arm. “You are too pretty to work. You can stay right here and do whatever you ladies do all day. Your mama will take care of your time, and I’ll start a bank account for you tomorrow. Go down to Sweetwater to the Cadillac dealership and pick out whatever car you want.”

“I’m twenty-eight years old. I want to be independent,” she protested.

“Nonsense. When me and your mama are dead, this whole empire will belong to you. Your mama can find things for you to do, like fund-raisers, organizin’ parties, that kind of thing. Leave the moneymakin’ stuff to your old daddy here . . . and to a good CEO when I’m gone.” Dill set about eating his lunch.

Jennie Sue had learned years ago to pick her battles—this wasn’t the time or place. Right now she had to get through the meal, and that meant enduring her mother’s dirty looks every time she took a bite of fried chicken.

Cricket Lawson almost choked on a bite of cherry pie when she glanced across the road and saw Jennie Sue Baker getting off a Greyhound bus. She swallowed quickly and downed half a glass of sweet tea. Then she grabbed her camera and rushed to the window. She’d for sure think that she’d been dreaming by tomorrow if she didn’t have proof that Jennie Sue looked like hammered owl crap.

Flashing pictures as fast as her little camera would work, she took at least forty shots of Jennie Sue in faded jeans, sneakers, and a faded orange T-shirt with the Longhorn insignia on the front. Jennie Sue started across the street toward the café, and Cricket’s pulse kicked up at least twenty points. She’d hated the girl in high school, but she’d put the past behind her for half an hour if she could shoot a few more close-ups of her without makeup. No one would believe this.

“Dammit!” Cricket hissed when Charlotte pulled up in her white Caddy and Jennie Sue put a suitcase in the back seat. Leave it to that rich bitch to spoil Cricket’s day.

“What are you doin’ over there?” Lettie Clifford asked from a nearby booth where she was having a banana split.

“Damn that Charlotte Baker,” Cricket sighed.

Lettie motioned toward the place across the table from her. “I like the way you’re thinkin’. Come over here, little girl, and tell me what you mean by that.”

Cricket set her camera on the table and slid into the booth. “I’ve got time now that the morning rush is over. Jennie Sue Baker just got off the Greyhound bus that goes on to Sweetwater. She’s got one suitcase with her, and she looks like hell. I swear, she didn’t even have on makeup.”

“No!” Lettie slapped a hand on each side of her chubby face. Standing at just over five feet, she had her dyed black hair worn in that kinky style that was popular in the seventies. One of the richest women in West Texas, she lived in the same little white frame house she’d been born in more than eighty years before, and she didn’t take shit off no one—especially Charlotte Baker and her Sweetwater Belles, or as Lettie called them, the Sweetwater Bitches.