Free Scrapbook of Secrets by Mollie Cox Bryan

“Here is the letter from her publisher, and this is a sales report to Maggie Rae Dasher, aka Ms. Juicy X.” She placed the sales report on the table for them to ooh and aah over. Thousands of dollars in sales.
    Sheila was the first to giggle; then they all started. Even Vera, who was still crying, started to giggle.
    “You mean dirty stories? Maggie Rae? Wrote dirty stories?” Sheila wondered aloud.
    After they all calmed down, Annie told them, “Yes, but there’s more. So much more.”
    “Well?” Sheila said.
    “Here’s a card from Robert, her husband. Listen to this,” Annie said, and began to read:
    “‘Maggie, I know you love writing about sex. But I wish you’d stop. It makes me feel like I can’t be a man and support you. I’m so sorry that I lost my temper and hurt you last night. I just don’t know what gets into me.’ And Maggie Rae scrawled across it: ‘I’ll write want I want to write,’ set off with big red X’s.”
    “Well, now, it seems she wasn’t the mouse we thought she was,” Vera finally said.

Chapter 11
    When Vera came into the room, Beatrice was sitting in a chair with her bag packed.
    “About damn time,” Beatrice said, looking over her daughter’s pink sweat suit with a scowl.
    “Sorry, Mama. You know Sunday mornings I like to sleep in a bit,” Vera said.
    “Good morning, Bea,” Bill said, walking in the door.
    “Morning was over a half an hour ago,” she mumbled.
    “Are you ready to go home?” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed.
    God, could I ask for a more dim-witted son-in-law? Bea just looked at him; then she looked at her bag.
    “I’ll get the nurse, Mama, so we can get the process under way. You know, they will need to officially discharge you and get you a wheelchair,” Vera said, leaving the room.
    “Have they figured out who stabbed me yet?” Bea asked Bill.
    “I’ve not heard,” he said. “Are you scared to go home?”
    “Scared? Just because someone stabbed me in the neck? Hmmph,” she said. “Someone comes into my house, I’ll shoot the bastard.”
    “Maybe we should get you an alarm system, just to be on the safe side,” he said, smiling, and then smoothing over the blanket.
    Alarm system? Bea never thought she’d ever hear about that, but things were changing in her little town, faster than she knew it. She used to know all of the families in town—and most of the farmers and mountain folk on the outskirts, too. With all the new people coming from the cities—like Charlottesville, Lynchburg, and Roanoke—hell, even from Washington, D.C., she didn’t know half the people in her town.
    It used to be she could walk from one end of the town to the other and smile and greet everybody along the way. Now she found herself searching, sometimes for one familiar face.
    She remembered how pleasant it was to live right on Main Street, her end now called Ivy Street, quiet at the appropriate times and with just enough activity throughout the day to keep it interesting. Her house was one in a row of five at one time, though the one at the very end burned in 1965; then the one next to it was purchased by a real estate company just a few years back, after “Old Man” Miller died. Now she had two neighbors on her side of the street, each living in identical Victorian-style houses—all different colors. Hers was pink and blue; on one side was a yellow house trimmed in blue; the other house was blue, trimmed in red.
    Across the street were the old brick town houses—some were almost covered by ivy. Betty’s place was the prettiest—she was quite a gardener, with something blooming all year long. Beatrice always liked to look out her bedroom window, which faced the front of the street, at Betty’s garden.
    If she walked across the street and into town, it gave her a different vantage point. She liked to change her path once in a while. Dolly’s Beauty Shop was first; then came the post office, expanded to fill almost the whole block. On the