Holly Banks Full of Angst (Village of Primm, #1)(15)

“Graffiti is art, Holly!”

Of course it is, Mom.

After they hung up, Holly showed Caleb the front door.

“I’ll bring a flyer by the house,” he offered. “You should enter the Wilhelm Klaus Film Festival. Get back into it.”

“Who says I’m not into it? I’ve kept up with it.” Did she sound as defensive as she felt? And why was he looking at her that way? “I do plenty with film.” Poker face. More like a bald-faced lie. She hadn’t done squat with her film career since graduating college. Except, maybe, watch.

“Wilhelm Klaus.” Caleb passed an invoice to Holly. “In Primm. That’s huge.” Both hands in the air—for emphasis. “Huge.”

Wilhelm Klaus? In Primm?

“Think about it,” said Caleb.

And Holly had nothing. No demo, no script, no logline. Nothing. But so what? Life gets busy—that’s all. And Holly was a mom. Ella was her first priority. So what if years of her life were lost to laundry, dishes, and picking up toys? She loved Ella. “You don’t know a thing about me,” she told him.

“I think I do.” There was something tender but amiss in the way his eyes searched hers: an unspoken understanding, but also a challenge. Something. He took his leave, out Holly’s front door, across the porch that fared better under Collette. Holly’d done nothing with Collette’s porch despite plans to lay a welcome mat the moment she arrived in Primm. Maybe she sucked at beginnings. Maybe Holly’s act one lagged a bit.

CAST LIST

HOLLY BANKS . . . . . . film school grad





CALEB THE CABLE GUY . . . . . . film school dropout





What’d he know? He was probably a gamer. A YouTuber. Something. Probably lived in a basement. Not bothering to uncross her arms, Holly gave a swift kick to close the front door, separating herself from Caleb, from the reminder of Collette, and from the Village of Primm beyond her front porch. The Village of Primm, no doubt, was waiting to welcome her with open arms. At least, Holly hoped it was. Mary-Margaret had singled her out at New Parent Orientation. Penelope had thrown her under the bus by telling her to wear yellow. “Get out while you still can,” Penelope had warned. Penelope—the woman who recruited Holly to live in Primm. Holly assumed Ella would feel welcome in kindergarten, but would Holly feel welcome in Primm? From the doorway of her new home on Petunia Lane, Holly grew increasingly unsettled. About Jack. About Bethanny. About the G-Class visitor. His envelope. Wilhelm Klaus.

Maybe Greta was right. Maybe something bad was about to happen. Something really, really dreadful. Like a tornado. Or a house landing on a witch. There’s no place like home. Right?





6





Monday, Labor Day


Topiaries were everywhere. On porches. In shop windows. Flanking entry doorways to smart cafés. Persnickety little plants. Holly wondered if other plants admired them. Or made fun of them. Seemed a cruel thing to do to a plant: shape it into something it would never become were it left to its own devices.

Bicyclists filled the bike lane to the right of Holly’s red Suburban. She suspected that what she and Ella were seeing were tourists making use of the fleet of Tiffany blue cruiser bikes Penelope said were available for rent from Papyrus, Parchment & Paper, the indie bookseller in town. Tiffany blue cruiser bikes to borrow. Imagine! Holly suspected the tourists came for the Topiary Park but stayed for the charm.

Up ahead of them, a trolley car slowed to a stop beside a gas lamppost and a triple-sphere topiary that stood six feet in height in a stately black urn. An elderly gentleman with a book in the crook of his arm and a blue Great Dane beside him raised two fingers to signal the trolley driver. Holly’s eyes shifted from the open-air trolley’s copper railings and intricate wood paneling to the rare steely-blue coat on the dog—a color no other breed could boast. The only way to get a blue Great Dane was to breed two Great Danes that both carried the recessive blue gene—very rare. The elderly gentleman looked right at Holly and tipped his hat, presumably to acknowledge her patience as the trolley stopped to let him board. Holly nodded, unaware of the clout he held in the village, unaware of the muck they’d both find themselves in by week’s end. The old man nodded back, bending first to lift an old typewriter from the bench beside him. From what Holly could see, the typewriter was antique, highly ornate, with what appeared to be enameled roses on the body of the typewriter above the keys. Probably quite valuable.

They followed the trolley to the renovated train station in the trolley lot next to the Topiary Park but missed the opportunity to introduce themselves to the man and his rare blue Great Dane. Ella held Holly’s hand, swinging it as they strolled the length of a cobblestone sidewalk beside an eight-foot-tall wrought iron fence along the front entrance to the Topiary Park. Consumed by a thick drape of creeping ivy, the fence obscured the park beyond it, but as they reached the enormous entry gate, the ivy was cut away, exposing a white enamel oval sign edged with black cast-iron scrollwork and carved with ornate black calligraphy: VILLAGE OF PRIMM TOPIARY PARK. Chiseled into a limestone mantel at the top of the archway above them were the words Cnaeus Matius Calvinus. Holly didn’t know what that meant but loved the implied majesty.

Ella reached out to touch a bean-like seedpod hanging from the wisteria. “Don’t touch that,” Holly warned, wondering why anyone would grow wisteria within reach of children. “Every part of the wisteria plant is poisonous.” The wisteria reminded Holly of the television series Desperate Housewives. When she was in film school, she made a replica of that neighborhood in prop class. The neighborhood was an actual set at Universal Studios Hollywood named Colonial Street. Leave It to Beaver, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The ’Burbs . . . they were all shot there. So were others. Film crews had been modifying that street for years.