Sugar Street Read online

  Sugar Street

  Book #1 in the Sugar Street series

  M.J. Pullen

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Want More M.J.?

  Sneak Peek…

  Sugar Street

  Book #1 in the Sugar Street series

  Copyright © 2018 by Amanda Pullen Turetsky

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover Design & Interior Format by The Killion Group, Inc.

  www.thekilliongroupinc.com

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the writer’s imagination. All rights reserved. Scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of this book without the permission of the author is unlawful piracy and theft.

  To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author.

  Thank you for respecting this author’s hard work and livelihood.

  For the neighbors.

  1

  Jess

  City Jail, Sugar Mills, Georgia

  To be honest, her first trip to jail was not living up to Jess Rodriguez’s expectations. Years of Law and Order had led her to believe the cells at the Sugar Mills Jail would be larger, more open to the rest of the police station. She hadn’t spent much time considering the small suburban jail, despite driving past it at least once a day. It was tucked on the ground floor of City Hall, which in turn was set back from the main thoroughfare through the historic center of Sugar Mills. Once a quaint northern outpost on the Chattahoochee River, where a wealthy sugar cane processor gave the town its livelihood and name, Sugar Mills was now another chunk of increasingly homogenous suburban Atlanta sprawl.

  Before arriving tonight, she’d assumed there would be bars along one wall, maybe facing the guard station so she and her companions in the women’s holding cell could call out if they needed something. But there were no bars. Concrete walls and a heavy institutional door, with an electronic lock and speaker next to it. This door had a long, narrow slit in the middle. In case the speaker quit working in a power outage?

  Oh, God. What if there were a power outage?

  What if they were locked in and couldn’t get out? What if they needed something? Jess was suddenly thirsty. Not that she wanted to drink, and be forced to use the weird metal toilet in the far corner. But still. She’d sort of assumed that when you were in a small-town jail at night, you’d lie on a scratchy blanket and talk to the guards while they watched a tiny desk-sized television. Come to think of it, her primary impressions of jail might be from The Andy Griffith Show.

  “Stop.” Delia Cargill moaned from her folded-over position on the bench across from Jess. Her normally perfectly coiffed friend was dressed in a see-through black top, gray sweatpants that were too large, and cheap pink flip-flops. Of the three of them—Jess, Delia, and Maizy Henriksson—Delia was the only one whose shoelaces the guards hadn’t had to confiscate.

  “Stop what?” Jess said.

  “You’re making a whining noise. It’s incessant.”

  “I am? No, I’m not.”

  “You are,” Maizy agreed from her spot on the third wall. Maizy was sitting cross-legged with her eyes closed, like fucking Buddha instead of the president of the PTA. She was a few feet away from the cell’s fourth occupant: a lady who smelled like urine and cheap liquor and had been snoring loudly since Jess and the other two had arrived. “And it’s seriously irritating.”

  “Well, it’s nice to see the two of you agreeing on something for once,” Jess said flatly.

  “Shut up,” Maizy and Delia said simultaneously.

  Fine. Jess closed her eyes, trying to mimic Maizy’s calm position. She sucked at meditation. And she was not good in situations like this. Jess was not a crisis girl.

  Carras—who had not been arrested with the other three—seemed like a crisis girl. Maybe it was her Caribbean roots—she had that whole chill, Bobby McFerrin thing going—or her years in front of crowds on the tennis court, or her training as a therapist. Maybe because she was the only one of the four of them who hadn’t yet had her sanity destroyed by motherhood. Whatever it was, Carras always seemed to be the calm one. Jess could use some of that calm right about now. Was it weird that Carras hadn’t been brought in yet?

  “For God’s sake, Jess, stop!” Delia snapped.

  Now she heard it. The whining noise came from her own chest, as though it belonged to someone else. “Sorry.” Feeling the need to fill the silence with something else, she added, “I was thinking that if Carras isn’t here yet, maybe she can get us help. Reach one of the guys.”

  “Let’s hope.” Delia sighed.

  Poor Delia. Gage was on an international flight—little chance of reaching him for hours. At least Tom was only in Boston, covering a game at Fenway Park. How was it they had managed to get arrested when three out of their four husbands were out of town?

  How was it they had managed to get arrested at all?

  “I never wanted this,” Jess said, barely aware she was speaking aloud. “I tried to say no.”

  Delia’s head snapped toward her. “You’re saying that I did want this?” Her usually refined, Southern parlor accent slipped into the hillbilly drawl that Delia only let fly when she was angry. “You’re saying that I talked you into it against your will? Okay, fine. I’m a horrible person. I’ve ruined all our lives. Happy?”

  “Delia, that’s not what I meant. But my marriage isn’t like yours and Gage’s—”

  “You didn’t ruin anyone’s life,” Maizy interrupted. “We’re adults and we can take our medicine with our big-girl panties on.”

  Delia shot Maizy a baffled glance. Before they could say more, however, the electronic lock buzzed on the cell door, and Jess’s brief hope that Carras was working to get them out died. Carras came in with her head down, wearing athletic shorts and sandals, and a black T-shirt with a faded red mask in the middle—probably some comic book character Jess wouldn’t know if she met in an alley. Carras looked despondent: her normally glowing onyx skin was ashen and hollow. “Sorry,” she said. “I called everyone I could before the officer came to my house. I had to leave messages.”

  The deputy who’d escorted Carras in pulled the metal door closed, and Jess felt the slamming sound reverberate in her skull for long after the noise itself had stopped. Carras had been their last hope.

  Carras dropped onto the cold metal bench next to Jess, and the air in the room seemed to deflate with her.
There was nothing else. All they could do now was wait for their fate to be decided.

  2

  Jess

  Two Months Earlier

  She should have known something was up when Delia invited them to play tennis. Or in Jess’s case, pretend to play tennis.

  Technically, Jess was half the doubles team soundly defeating her friend Delia and Belinda Hayes-Currington, the iconic head of the Sugar Mills Country Club Membership Committee. In reality, very little of that achievement could be attributed to Jess herself, considering her teammate was two-time women’s NCAA champion Carras Lightbourne Prather. If Jess’s husband Tom and Carras’s husband Stuart hadn’t been longtime friends, Carras surely would never have accepted an invitation that included Jess as a doubles partner, even for a casual neighborhood match.

  Carras made a pick-up tennis match appear as hard as watching Netflix on her couch. Jess watched in awe, panting, as Carras floated back and forth across their side of the court; her dark, muscular legs flexed with effort that didn’t show on her face. She had Delia and Belinda running all over the court, both wiping their foreheads beneath embroidered Sugar Mills Country Club tennis visors. Carras, meanwhile, had scarcely broken a sweat.

  “You’re not even trying,” Delia complained, when she and Jess ended up a few feet from each other at the net while Belinda chased down an errant ball.

  “I don’t have to.” Jess shrugged. “Carras could beat all three of us in her sleep.”

  “Can you ask her to ease up?” Delia glanced furtively toward Belinda’s retreating backside. “I finally got Belinda to order from my Pure Indulgences catalog last month, and I am this close,” she held her palm an inch from her racket, “to getting her to host a party. If the Club Side women hear that Belinda Hayes-Currington has done it, I could pay off Sadie’s braces before the end of the summer.”

  “Sounds like you can afford to lose, then.” Jess grinned. “Besides, you dragged me here, and said to bring a fourth. I have work I could be doing at home. On the Annex Side.”

  In their neighborhood, “Club Side” referred to the original Sugar Mills Country Club: grand, integration-era houses of the 1960s with sweeping green lawns that surrounded the expansive dome-topped clubhouse, golf course, tennis courts certified by the International Tennis Federation, and Olympic-sized pool, plus a zero-entry children’s pool with multiple water slides.

  Across Sweet River Road was Sugar Mills Annex, the newer, more modest subdivision where Jess, Delia, and Carras lived. Annex residents could pay a reduced annual fee for a limited club membership, which allowed them to reserve tee times and tennis courts, and sign their kids up for the swim team. They could even make reservations at the club’s restaurant during off-peak hours, so long as they paid their tabs in cash (Club Side members retained the privilege of being billed monthly with their dues).

  For her part, Jess thought the whole thing was rather absurd. It had been Tom who’d insisted they move here ten years earlier, when the real estate crash made prices almost affordable, and their daughter Mina was on the way. It had been a “most house for the money” kind of decision at a time when Jess was already overwhelmed by impending motherhood. Now she’d grown comfortable in their house and (mostly) in suburban utopia, but the cachet of living in Sugar Mills still meant nothing to her.

  Delia Cargill, on the other hand, seemed to long for the mysterious exclusivity of the Club Side. Jess enjoyed her friendship with her spunky blonde neighbor Delia, and their proximity across the cul-de-sac had thrown them together despite being different in almost every way. Delia’s desperation to fit in with the club, and to court Belinda Hayes-Currington’s friendship, Jess would never fully understand.

  “Better hustle!” she called, teasing, as Delia scrambled to hit Carras’s drop shot. Delia glared as she lobbed the ball back over the net. Jess grunted with feigned effort to get to it, but actually veered off long before she got there. Carras expertly took the ball out of the air for a winning overhead from much farther away.

  To be fair, Carras had been a tennis star in college, and played semipro for a while afterward before deciding to settle down with Tom’s college roommate, Stuart Prather, and work as a therapist for teenagers. It had been somewhat cruel to bring Carras as her fourth, but what did Delia expect, dragging Jess out last minute like this?

  Carras smashed a volley at Delia’s feet. Seconds later, she whipped a fireball shot past Belinda to end the game. Thank goodness. As the women wiped their brows and congratulated one another at the net, Carras was polite enough to congratulate Jess, as though she’d had anything to do with their victory. Jess laughed.

  “Great game, ladies.” Belinda’s pristine white teeth shone brightly, along with most of her gums. She shouldered her Tory Burch tennis bag, which probably cost a month’s worth of groceries at Jess’s house. “Lunch up the hill. My treat.”

  Without waiting for agreement, Belinda started up the hill toward the club café. As they shuffled behind her, Jess leaned in to Delia. “You owe me for this. I have a huge stack of proposals due tomorrow.”

  Delia knocked Jess with her shoulder. “Like you can’t do those things in your sleep by now. Besides, what are they going to do, fire you?”

  A valid point. Jess had been doing contract work for her old management consulting firm ever since Mina was born nine years ago. She was their most reliable editor of proposals and presentations, all the stuff the consultants hated doing themselves. She could probably tell them she wanted two months off and to be paid in blueberry pancakes, and they still wouldn’t fire her.

  “Fine. But you know I hate these ‘ladies who lunch’ things,” Jess complained. “The conversation always devolves into hyper-achieving parent one-upmanship.”

  “You’ll be fine. You’re a great mom with nothing to prove, and I am going to get Belinda to host a party and invite all her upper-crust friends with disposable income. It will be fabulous.”

  Jess rolled her eyes. Still, it was a relief to get off the court and into the shade of an umbrella at the café. Belinda signaled to a waiter in shorts and a polo as they dropped their bags and settled onto the warm iron patio furniture.

  “You have to excuse my destroyed manicure,” Belinda said, even though Jess could see nothing wrong with her pale pink, shiny nails. “Sewing all these costumes for the play is murder.”

  “Are all three of your kids in the play?” Delia asked. “You have such a talented family.”

  “Couldn’t talk them out of it,” Belinda lamented. Jess found this hard to believe, because Orson the Fifth—O5, Belinda’s youngest—was a white-blond boy in Dash’s class, whom she had never heard utter a single word voluntarily. “And you know I’ve taken on the costumes for half the cast—people don’t know how to sew anymore.”

  “Mina has a small part,” Jess said, fully aware she was one of those people. “I bought something at the dollar store to throw over tights. The teacher said it was fine.”

  Belinda patted her hand. “You working moms. I don’t know how you do it. Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll put Mina in the back of the ensemble. She’ll blend right in.”

  Jess opened her mouth to respond, but couldn’t figure out how to do it without swearing.

  Belinda didn’t notice. “Personally, I can’t imagine how I would have time to hold down a job. Allegra made the all-state gymnastics team again this year, and her coach wants her to anchor the dance competition as well. Emma’s joined the travel soccer team, and she plays lacrosse, and they both want voice lessons this summer… Remember, Delia, I told you about that talent scout who found us on our cruise last year?”

  Jess raised an eyebrow at Delia, who avoided her gaze. Carras, exempt from the conversation thanks to her non-parent status, said nothing. Before they had to suffer Belinda’s rendition of how the Currington girls got “discovered,” however, the waiter returned with a pitcher of white peach sangria and five frosted glasses.

  “Is someone joining us?” Delia glanced
at the fifth glass.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Belinda trilled. “I have a friend coming. My…tennis instructor.”

  Carras’s eyes went wide and Jess saw her glance away. Belinda’s tennis skills didn’t exactly scream professional tutelage, even to Jess’s inexperienced eye.

  Jess checked her watch. The kids would be getting off the bus in three hours. She had four proposals, one presentation, and three loads of laundry to finish by the weekend, on top of getting Mina to the auditorium for four showings of the school play, with no help from Tom until Sunday afternoon.

  But before Belinda could explain why her tennis coach was meeting her at lunch rather than on the court, her face lit. “Here he is! Parker! Yoo-hoo!”

  Across the patio, a well-built Asian man in his twenties spotted Belinda and crossed to their table, smiling wide. He wore white shorts with a lime-green athletic polo that strained across his substantial chest and arm muscles. Yum. Jess sat up straighter, suddenly worried that the soft roll of fat on her lower belly might be showing.

  Parker took the seat next to Belinda, kissing her hand. Already flushed from their match, Belinda reddened prettily. A harmless enough gesture, Jess supposed. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was intruding on an intimate moment. It was a surprise to think of Belinda that way: she was one of those super-moms who served on every committee imaginable for her three gorgeous, towheaded children. To think of her as a sexual creature was a bit jarring.

  “Parker, these are the girls I was telling you about,” Belinda said. “Delia, Jess, and Carrie.”

  “Carras.”

  “Right. Carras is a tennis player, too.”

  Parker leaned in. “I thought I recognized you. Carras Lightbourne, right?” He turned to Belinda. “You didn’t tell me you had a semipro tennis player on your list.”

  “I didn’t know.” Belinda spoke brightly, through her teeth. “So you know each other?”