“Don’t read that.” I didn’t try to cover up the fact that it did sound a lot like what happened between Iris, Bobby Peters, and Piddy Satterly and that all the names did sound familiar. “Let’s go.”
But did anyone ever think I was going to stop Iris? No. She kept reading.
“Rose.” She pulled the book from her face. “At least the type of flower name was changed.” She put the book back up in front of her. “‘I can explain, Brandon pleaded and handed my very own mother’s pie plate to his lover. It was one thing to have an affair. It was a whole other situation they were eating out of the pie plate, making this entire situation a complete travesty.’”
“Okay.” I grabbed her book. “That’s enough.”
“Did you know this was about us?” Iris stomped right over to Piddy and swiped her forearm down the entire stack of Beyond Boundaries. Every one of them tumbled to the floor.
“I can’t help what people write.” Piddy rushed to pick up the books.
“Then you shouldn’t be sleeping around with everyone’s husbands and just stay with your own.” Iris was spit-fire mad.
“Let’s go.” I took Iris by the arms and wasn’t about to let her go.
“Iris.” Angela put her hand out. “This is not the place for this, and I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“This is smut!” Iris grabbed one of the books Piddy had just stacked back up. “This is trash.” Iris threw the book at Piddy.
Piddy ducked, and the book slammed into the counter.
“Leave, or I’ll have to arrest you for disturbing the peace,” Angela warned and rested her hand on her gun strapped in her utility belt.
“Fine. But you better have little miss Stella Jane Clark surrounded by deputies tomorrow, because if I get my hands on her. . .” Iris was seething mad. It was like she had lost her mind.
“Let’s go,” I whispered and guided her to the door, but it wasn’t without first getting a glance of the horrified look on Elsbeth’s face.
“The fresh air will do you good.” I knew that was a big fat lie, but I tried everything to get Iris to take some deep breaths and not regret anything she was saying.
She flung herself free once we were back outside among the crowd and headed toward the bakery.
“This is illegal. It has to be illegal.” She flipped around and ripped the copy of the book out of my hands.
“I don’t know anything about all of that, but I do know that we are going to go back to the bakery and calmly have a chat.” This was the time I needed Monica Reed to take my last loop.
Once we were inside of the bakery and I’d seen Iris grab ingredients to make something, I knew she’d be okay for a few minutes while I made a phone call to the post office.
“I’ll be fine.” Iris looked up at me, her hands dug deep inside the mixing bowl.
I waited to talk to Iris until she seemed like she was in a better place.
She turned on the oven and put whatever dough she had made in the refrigerator.
“It needs to chill.” She pushed her hair back, began to fill the coffeepot, and turned it on. “Don’t you have to go to work?”
“Nope.” I shook my head. “I’m hanging out with you until my knitting class.”
And there was no way I was going to miss that class. I could only imagine what the Front Porch Ladies had to say about this book.
“The only thing that is going to get me through this is baking.” I already knew that, but I let her talk.
I had gotten pretty good at listening over the years. It took a long time to learn not to give my two cents, but as I’d gotten older, I realized people didn’t really want advice. They simply wanted to be heard, and more times than not, their issues got worked out as they heard themselves talking out loud. But in Iris’s case, I wasn’t sure how long it was going to take until this died down. Especially now since it seemed like this was going to be a blockbuster book and possibly a movie loosely based on the demise of Iris’s marriage.
“Iris! Iris!” Bobby Peters’s voice echoed into the bakery before he bolted through the kitchen door and hurried over to her, giving her a vicious yank of the arm. “What in the world did you tell that dumb little girl?”
“Don’t you lay a hand on me, Bobby Peters.” Iris tried to jerk her arm away, but he had a grip on it.
“Let her go!” I hollered at him, but Iris had already clubbed him over the head with her rolling pin. I stood in shock at two things. First one was how Bobby had grabbed her. I’d never seen or heard Bobby Peters be violent. Unless you count the time that he did knock me off a piece of playground equipment in elementary school where I did break my arm, but that was kid stuff.
Still. . . a womanizer, yes, he was.
The second one was how easy it was for Iris to just whack him over the head.
This entire situation was getting out of control.
“Dagummit, woman! What did you do that for?” He rubbed his head.
“I knew you was stupid but not so stupid as to ask such a dumb question.” Iris sucked in a deep breath. “Now you can sit down and have a cup of coffee with me and Bernie, or I can call Angela Hafley and get a protective order out on you if I don’t kill you first. That’s the first and last time you will ever put a hand on me, Bobby Peters.”
“I’m sorry.” He went to touch her on the arm, but she jerked back. “Let me see if I hurt you. I didn’t mean to, but when Elton Satterly showed up at work with that filthy book in his hand…” His words faded as if he were trying to find the right ones. “I’m sorry, Iris. You don’t deserve this kind of attention. You did nothing wrong.”
“And apparently it’s enough to make into a movie.” Iris didn’t wait long for the dough to chill. She took it out of the refrigerator and slapped it on the workstation. The veins in her forearm were popping out as she used all her strength to take out her frustrations over what had happened.
“Gosh, Iris.” Bobby ran his hands through his hair. “I’m so sorry. I haven’t seen her since that day. I mean, if it means anything.”
“I didn’t even know she was still around.”
I was not sure how this was going to play out, but I knew it didn’t look good.
“I warned you I had a feeling.” She picked up the dough and flung it down with a splat. “I just didn’t know it was going to be about me and how you and your”—she gestured to his nether region—“would continue to haunt me!”
Her screams were so loud, my ears were ringing.
“Surely there’s something we can do. We can sue.” Bobby’s face lit up. “Have them unpublish the books.”
“And how exactly do they do that?” She looked at him with the evilest eyes I’d ever seen on Iris. “The best thing for you to do is to get out of my sight.”
“But what about the coffee you offered?”
Boy, was Bobby Peters dumb.
“I should’ve listened to my mama the day I walked out the door on prom night with you.” Iris picked up the rolling pin and shook it at him. He lifted his hands up to his head. “She said, ‘Iris, you’ll never find Mr. Right hanging around Mr. Wrong.’ And do you know who the Mr. Wrong was that she was referring to?”