A Triple Scoop of I Scream by Gabrielle Holly Page B

handle in place. Toni had time to notice that the handle in her hand was no longer attached to the carriage house door, but not enough time to register what that meant—until her plump butt plopped into the mud. Toni jerked her hand out of the muck, and with a primal snarl flung the door handle. The moment it left her fingers, she wished it hadn’t. She cringed as she watched the heavy iron hardware slice through the air and ping off the pickup’s windshield. The crack didn’t form immediately, but once it started its sickening crawl, it didn’t stop until it had drawn a craggy horizontal line the entire length of the glass.
    “ Fuuuuuuuuuuuck,” she screamed and slapped her hands against the ground, consequently splattering herself with a spray of ice-cold sludge.
    Rage bubbled up. Her mind began to race as she tried to find something or someone—other than herself—to blame for the mess she’d found herself in. She thought of the eighteen-hour work days and shady contractors and neurotic brides that had been part of the career she’d left behind. Back in the city she had slept fitfully, worried obsessively, and regularly gulped stomach medication straight from the bottle.
    Each evening, when she had finally arrived back at her condo, exhausted and stressed to the breaking point, she had invariably found Sparky sprawled out on the sofa with a video game controller in his hands and a regiment of empty beer bottles standing in formation on the coffee table.
    Sparky worked about ten hours a week as a wedding reception DJ, which was how the two had met. He and Toni had exchanged brief pleasantries every time he emceed a wedding at her hotel. One evening Toni was leaving her office just as Sparky was wheeling his DJ equipment out through the lobby. He’d asked her to join him for a drink in the hotel lounge after he’d loaded his van. Toni would always remember that he’d ordered several rounds of expensive, imported beer and then apologised profusely for having ‘forgotten’ his wallet.
    Indulging in luxury at Toni’s expense fast became a habit. Toni’s frenetic work life had left her little time to meet men or develop relationships. She had been so grateful for companionship that she’d ignored the glaring warning signs surrounding Sparky—including his nickname. She’d once overheard the caterers at a wedding reception comment, “‘Sparky’? Really? That’s a name for a Dalmatian or a Little League baseball shortstop—not a grown man.”
    Right from the beginning Toni had chosen to disregard every red flag. Sparky had got so drunk on imported beer the night of their ‘first date’ that Toni had driven him back to her condo and tucked him in on the couch—where he’d remained for the next three years.
    Toni shivered, not sure if it was due to the memory of her ne’er-do-well ex or the fact that she was soaked to the skin. Toni had, she realised, traded in one set of problems for another. Six months ago she had convinced herself that the only way out of her predicament was to create an entirely opposite circumstance. Well, she’d certainly done that, and now as she sat seething in the frigid mud, she decided that she hated the broken-down inn, and the off-kilter carriage house, and the decrepit pickup truck, and the whole stupid town of Soldiers Orchard.
    The economy of the town of Soldiers Orchard hinged on two industries—the factory that took perfectly good bar soap and cooked it down into a soupy liquid to be pumped from bathroom dispensers, and the historic Civil War trade. The truck had originally been part of the delivery fleet for the former before being sold off and converted into a food vending vehicle for the latter.
    The pickup had come with the inn. No surprise there as its specialised modifications made it virtually unsalable. The front end looked like any other rust-riddled old truck. The rear, however, had been made over to suggest a battlefield chow wagon. The bed had been