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“Oh, I’ve got it. Me and Hennifer.”
“She doesn’t hate you when you feed her.”
“And I don’t hate you as much when you feed me, but the feeling is mutual all of the other times.”
“Well,” Kerry said, “aren’t you just two peas in a pod?”
I frowned. Did she not just hear that we fought all the time?
Fuck. I shouldn’t have said anything. I had a feeling I would be hearing this from Nicole on Monday once Kerry told everyone we fought frequently.
“Tell me about you,” Mollie said smoothly. “I don’t even know your name!”
“Kerry,” she said. “Otherwise known as the town’s mom and gossip.”
Mollie nodded, but her eyes flicked to me as if she knew exactly why I was so hesitant to talk to her.
“You’ll have to catch me up on all of the gossip, then. I haven’t heard much.”
“I’dlovethat.” She looked at me and then back at Mollie. “There’s a lot you don’t know.”
Yeah, I should have seen that coming. I already knew Kerry would tell her everything I’d done as a teen. I’d be lucky if she didn’t fire me, or worse, look at me the same way everyone else in this town did.
“Eric and I should go,” I said, walking up to him. “We need to talk to Jackie.”
“Of course,” Mollie said. “Have fun being lectured.”
“Yeah, right.”
I walked away before I could hear anything else, and I tried my bestnotto turn around to see if I could guess if Kerry was talking about me or not.
I didn’t need to know.
“You look annoyed,” Jackie said when I walked in. “But less annoyed than I expected after all of that socializing Mollie put you through.”
“I’m fine,” I replied. “Ready to go home. What did you need to tell me?”
“Ah, well. I’ll try to say this as gently as possible.” She took a breath. “I can’t help you.”
“Can’t help me?”
“With the town.”
I blinked. Jackie wasn’t usually the kind to not help unless I’d fucked up.Badly.
I hadn’t tried hard enough. I should have forced myself to talk more.
“I understand.”
“Now hang on. Don’t get all broody until I explain.”
“What’s there to explain?”
“A lot.” She handed Eric a coloring page, and he ran off to one of the extra stations. “First of all, I can’t help you because I’m not the person for the job. I don’t push you in the way you need. You hated every second of us going around the square. UntilMollieshowed up.”
“Mollie? What does she have to do with this?”
“She’s theone.”