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THE BIG LIE
Willow Falls lost its charm for Dale Carruthers many years ago, after she found out Cliff Thomas had married someone else. Now, she hurried down Main Street doing errands, Drugstore, Library. Dale left her stepmother’s coffee house in the capable hands of Jonesy, an old family friend.Traveling from New York City to Willow Falls to look after her ailing stepmother wasn’t a big inconvenience. Dale was a widow now for three years. Her father had passed on four years earlier. Her mother died when she was a child. Dora, her father’s second
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wife, was sliding downhill fast. Dale’s chest had constricted at his death sentence.
But she had to be practical. The lease on the coffee house was up in two months. Dale would live in the house she grew up in and run the business until the lease expired. Then she’d go back to her empty life in Manhattan until Dora died.
Dale returned to find her twenty-year-old son chatting with Jonesy.
“You’ve got an internship for the holidays?” The older woman inquired.
“Yep. With a lawyer in town.”
“Good. We’ll probably have to be up here anyway,” Dale said as she unpacked small bottles of pills. Jonesy poured coffee.
“Funny thing, Dora keeps apologizing to me. Keeps saying she’s sorry. But I don’t know what she’s talking about. Do you, Jonesy?”
Jonesy sipped her coffee and lowered her eyes. “Nope.”
“She has dementia but still. She murmured ‘the lie, the big lie’ several times, then she cried. I haven’t a clue.” Dale stared at Jonesy.
The older woman checked her watch. “Oops. Gotta go. Past break time.”
“You were her best friend, Jonesy...”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
