Free Truly Madly Yours by Rachel Gibson Page B

better for another eleven months. Almost everything she owned resided in a storage shed on the outskirts of town, and her closest companions were the two Weimaraners walking beside her.
    It had taken Delaney less than five hours to decide to accept the terms of Henry’s will. An appallingly short amount of time, but she wanted the money. She’d been given a one-week reprieve to travel to Phoenix, quit her job, and close her apartment. Saying good-bye to her friends at Valentina had been hard. Saying good-bye to her freedom was even harder. It had been only a month, but it felt like she’d been a prisoner for a year.
    She had no job and wore boring clothes she didn’t particularly like because she lived with her mother.
    The hot sun baked the top of her head as she made her way down Grey Squirrel Lane toward the center of town. When she’d lived in Truly ten years ago, most of the streets hadn’t had names. There had been no need, but with the recent influx of summer residents, and the boom in real estate, the city council had knocked itself out to come up with really inventive street names like Gopher, Chipmunk, and Grey Squirrel. Delaney, it seemed, lived in the rodent section of town, while Lisa fared somewhat better over on Milkweed, which of course was next to Ragweed and Tumbleweed.
    Since she’d been back, she’d noticed a lot of other changes, too. The business district had quadrupled, and the old part of town had been given a facelift. There were two public boat ramps to accommodate the heavy invasion of boats and Jet Skis, and the city had added three new parks. But beyond those changes, there were two other very visible and telling signs that the town had finally been pulled into the 1990s. First, there was the Mountain Java Espresso Shop located between Sterling Realty and the Grits and Grub Diner. And second, the old lumber mill had been converted into a microbrewery. When Delaney had lived in Truly before, the people drank Folgers and Coors. They would have declared a double-shot skinny latte “sissy coffee” and would have beat the crap out of anyone who dared to utter the words “raspberry beer.”
    It was the Fourth of July and the town was smothered in patriotism. Red, white, and blue flags and ribbons decorated everything from the “Welcome to Truly” banner to the wooden Indian standing outside Howdy’s Trading Post. There would be a parade later, of course. In Truly, there were parades for just about every occasion. Maybe she’d stick around downtown and watch the parade. It wasn’t like she had anything else to do.
    At the corner of Beaver and Main, Delaney stopped and waited for an RV to lumber by. For walking so nicely beside her, she reached into her pocket and rewarded Duke and Dolores with Milk-bones. It had taken several frustrating weeks to assert her role as the alpha dog and teach them who was boss. She’d had the time. For the past month she’d spent some of her time catching up with a few old school friends. But they were all married and had families and looked at her as if she were abnormal because she didn’t.
    She would have loved to spend more time with Lisa, but unlike Delaney, Lisa had a job and a fiancé. She would have loved to sit down with her old friend and talk about Henry’s will and the real reason she was back in Truly. But she didn’t dare. If its stipulation became public, Delaney’s life would turn into a burning hell. She would become the subject of endless speculation and the topic of never-ending gossip. And if the part of the will concerning Nick was revealed, she’d probably have to kill herself.
    As it was, she was just likely to die of boredom before it was all over. She spent her days watching talk shows, or she walked Duke and Dolores as a means to get out of the house and escape the life her mother had planned for her. Gwen had decided that since Delaney would be living in Truly for a year, they should be involved in the same projects, belong