Tangled Up in You Read Free Page B

she flipped on the lamp clamped to the hutch of her desk. Two sixty-watt bulbs lit up a stack of diaries, her laptop, and her Taking Names and Kicking Ass sticky notes. Altogether there were ten diaries in various shapes and colors. Red. Blue. Pink. Two of the diaries had locks, while one of the others was nothing more than a yellow spiral notebook with the word Diary written in black marker. All of them had belonged to her mother.
    Maddie tapped the Diet Coke bottle against her thigh as she gazed at the top white book. She hadnt known theyd even existed until her great-aunt Marthas death a few months ago. She didnt believe Martha had purposely kept the diaries from her. More than likely shed intended to give them to Maddie someday but had completely forgotten. Alice hadnt been the only flighty female on the Jones family tree.
    As Marthas only living relative, it had been up to Maddie to settle her affairs, see to her funeral, and clean out her house. Shed managed to find homes for her aunts cats and had planned to donate most everything else to Goodwill. In one of the last cartons shed sorted through, shed come across old shoes, outdated purses, and a battered boot box. Shed almost tossed the battered box without lifting the top. A part of her almost wished that she had. Wished shed spared herself the pain of staring down into the box and feeling her heart shoved into her throat. As a child shed longed for a connection with her mother. Some little something that she could have and hold. Shed dreamed of having something she could take out from time to time that tied her to the woman whod given her life. Shed spent her childhood longing for somethingsomething that had been a few feet away in the top of a closet the whole time. Waiting for her in a Tony Lama box.
    The box had contained the diaries, her mothers obituary, and newspaper articles about her death. It had also held a satin bag filled with jewelry. Cheep stuff, mostly. A Foxy Lady necklace, several turquoise rings, a pair of silver hoop earrings, and a tiny pink band from St. Lukes Hospital with the words Baby Jones printed on it.
    Standing in her old bedroom that day, unable to breathe as her chest imploded, shed felt like a kid again. Scared and alone. Afraid to reach out and make the connection, but at the same time excited to finally have something tangible that had belonged to a mother she hardly remembered.
    Maddie set her Coke on the top of her desk and spun her office chair around. That day, shed taken the boot box home and placed the silk bag in her jewelry box. Then shed sat down and read the diaries. Shed read every word, devouring them in one day. The diaries had started on her mothers twelfth birthday. Some of them had been bigger and taken her mother longer to fill. Through them shed gotten to know Alice Jones.
    Shed gotten to know her as a child of twelve whod longed to grow up and be an actress like Anne Francis. A teen who longed to find true love on The Dating Game , and a woman who looked for love in all the wrong places.
    Maddie had found something to connect her to her mother, but the more shed read, the more shed felt at loose ends. Shed gotten her childhood wish and shed never felt so alone.

Chapter 2
    M ick Hennessy slipped a rubber band about a stack of cash and set it next to a pile of credit card and debit receipts. The sound of the electric coin sorter sitting on his desk filled the small office in the back of Morts. Everyone but Mick had gone home for the evening and he was just balancing the tills before he headed that way himself.
    Owning and running bars was in Micks blood. Micks great-grandfather had made and sold cheap grain alcohol during Prohibition and opened Hennessys two months after the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed and the spigots once again flowed in the United States. The bar had been in his family ever since.
    Mick didnt particularly care for belligerent drunks, but he did like the flexible hours that came with being