Ugly Ducklings Finish First by Stacy Gail Page A

female voice and gunned her car off the two-lane highway and onto a quiet farm road. It was too early for perky, and it was too early to listen to what she already knew. It was hot. Everyone knew it was hot. Even with the air-conditioning blowing full blast, she could still feel the prickly slide of perspiration down her spine.
    Except that had nothing to do with the temperature.
    Sick little knots tightened in her stomach, knots she couldn’t blame on the weather. She was waging an internal war with her nerves, and right now the nerves were winning. That was only natural. After all, seven years was a long time to go without visiting one’s mother.
    Small wonder she doubted she’d be welcome.
    A familiar stand of crape myrtles at the end of the dirt driveway came into view, and her palms grew slick against the steering wheel. Home. Only it had never really been home, at least in The Brady Bunch sense. Her idea of home had always been more like Apocalypse Now without the napalm. Every day had been a constant no-win battle in the house she grew up in, and it could all be traced back to a single root. Dallas-born Deborah Pruitt had never been content in Bitterthorn, and she’d been lavish in reminding her husband of it. Every time Deborah took a jeering stab at the town her father loved so much, it was like she was taking a slice at him.
    And everyone knew it.
    Over the years Payton’s silent disapproval of her mother’s attitude swelled. Deborah had known going into her marriage that she was accepting small-town life, yet all she’d done as far as Payton could recall was complain. For the sake of peace, though, Payton had kept her thoughts to herself in a way her mother never did, bottling up the bitterness and struggling on a daily basis to keep it from showing.
    The anguish over her father’s death had popped her internal cork in a big way, and all the anger and resentment that had had a lifetime to fester gushed out. Now, remembering how she’d accused her mother of pushing her father into an early grave made her cringe. Even if she’d believed it, that hadn’t been the time to confront Deborah. All she’d done was made the grief worse.
    Payton’s eyes swam as regret closed around her like an icy fist. Over the past seven years she and her mother had reestablished communication via emails, phone calls and the infrequent text. But the once unspoken tension that existed between them was now front and center, standing between them like a blighted eyesore she didn’t know how to tear down.
    Or, even if she could.
    She cut the engine in front of a single-story limestone ranch house with a neatly kept front yard and climbed out of the car, her pale yellow sundress a bright swirl about her legs. She still wasn’t sure what impulse had made her come here, and she stared at the walkway leading to the front door as if suspecting it of being booby-trapped. She could still get the hell out of here; it wasn’t as if her mother was expecting her, after all. It was probably idiotic to just show up as if nothing had happened, as if there weren’t an ocean of anguish separating her from her mother.
    This is a mistake. A seriously stupid mistake —
    Before she could convince herself to drive away like a bat out of hell, the front door swung open. She froze like a deer in the headlights as a smallish, just-past-middle-aged woman stepped out onto the porch, her short blond hair now liberally shot with silver.
    Silver? Payton’s eyes narrowed as she stared at the woman who was strangely unfamiliar to her. When had her mother begun to go gray? She hadn’t been gone from home that long, had she?
    “Hello, Mom.” Dismay bloomed when her mother came to a dead halt the moment she saw her, as if someone had suddenly switched her off. That one reaction from her mother killed the impulse to step toward her with open arms.
    Well. Not exactly the Hallmark moment she’d been hoping for.
    “Payton.” Her mother sounded as if she