“I suppose you could say that, although it’s hard to notice when we’re fighting about the noise at the bar. We’ve been going back and forth for weeks. This morning, it reached a head and we both ended up getting arrested.”
Lydia wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Arrested? God, Maddie. Does your daddy know?”
Maddie wasn’t sure. Simon might have said something. “I haven’t spoken to anyone about it yet.”
“I’m sure he could make all that go away.”
Maddie shrugged off her suggestion. It was entirely possible that her family could pull strings and fix this for her, but she wasn’t sure she wanted that. Emmett already treated her like an entitled little princess. That’s exactly what he expected her to do.
“I mean, what’s the point of being the most important family in town if it doesn’t do you any good? I wish I’d been able to get out of my little situation last year. Community service is not fun.”
She didn’t have much to say about that, so Maddie took a bite of her pizza and let it lie. She didn’t look up again until she heard Lydia make a sound of irritation. Maddie turned in time to see Pepper walk past their table to order at the counter. Normally, Maddie would’ve said something smart, but she held her tongue today. The last time she said something ugly about Pepper, Grant tried to stab her with a serving fork. She needed to keep peace in the family, and Pepper was going to be a part of that soon enough. Maddie actually went as far as to wave at Pepper as she left with her takeout.
“I can’t believe Trailer Park is going to be a Chamberlain,” Lydia complained, using the old nickname they’d both called Pepper in high school.
Maddie winced, hoping Pepper was out of earshot. “Lydia,” she chastised.
“What? You can’t tell me that your granny is happy about all this.”
“She actually is, although I don’t think Grant would care either way. He does what he wants.”
Lydia made another irritated sound. “Then she must be getting senile.”
Adelia Chamberlain was anything but senile. Maddie thought about pointing out that Lydia’s poor attitude just made her sound jealous, but she didn’t think that would help things. She needed to finish her lunch and get through the longest day ever.
Saturday night after closing the bakery, Maddie drove out to the family home on Willow Lake. She opened the front door of the antebellum mansion and waltzed in as though she still lived there—which she had, all her life, until she went to Paris, and then after she returned for a year or so before she bought the Victorian on Daisy Drive. The house was quiet when she entered, a far cry from her childhood.
At one time, the twelve residents of the house had kept it in a state of constant chaos. Add in a few friends of the children, a lady over to have tea with Granny, and the whole house was abuzz with activity. Now, the house seemed sad and lonely. Grandpa Chamberlain had died several years back. All six of the kids had moved out. Her baby sister, Hazel, was the last to go off to college just a month ago. That left her parents, Norman and Helen, her grandmother Adelia, and the two servants, Cookie and Winston.
“Hello?” Maddie shouted into the open hall at the bottom of the staircase.
“I’m in here, dear.”
Maddie instantly recognized the voice of her grandmother. That was exactly who she was here to see. Her father was a lawyer, so you’d think Maddie would go straight to him with legal troubles, but despite what Lydia said, that was a last resort. Her father would beat his chest, call his friends, and before she knew it, Emmett would lose his liquor license and have to close down the bar.
While that would solve her problem, that wasn’t what Maddie wanted. Despite their back and forths, she didn’t want Emmett to lose everything he’d worked for. All she wanted was to get out of this legal snafu and find another way to make peace with her neighbor. That’s where her grandmother came in.
Maddie found her in her library behind the large mahogany desk. She was in the middle of some correspondence and bill paying, judging by the sprawl of paper, envelopes, and an open checkbook on the blotter.
“Evening, Granny.”
Adelia Chamberlain looked up from her paperwork and smiled at her granddaughter. “Hello, Madelyn. What brings you to the house? Isn’t it your bedtime?”
It certainly felt like it. Getting two hours of sleep, spending all night handcuffed to Emmett, and losing even more time at the police station had left her with zero energy. But this was important. “Almost. I needed to talk to you, though.”
“Have a seat,” she said, gesturing to the chair. “I’ll have Cookie bring us some tea.”
Maddie expected her grandmother to ring the old brass bell she’d used to summon the help her whole life, but instead, she picked up the phone on her desk and typed away, squinting at the screen despite the glasses perched on the tip of her nose.
“Did you just text Cookie for tea?”
“Yes, dear. It seems far more civilized, don’t you think?”
It did, she just didn’t expect her aged grandmother to have anything to do with gadgetry like that.
“So what’s the problem?”
Maddie took a deep breath before she launched into her tale. She started with the noise, the battles, and finally, with the handcuffing incident that led to the arrest that morning. She left out the kiss. That would just complicate matters, and she refused to admit that she had a weakness where Emmett was concerned.