Mad as Helen Read Online Free Page B

for only a year, and the church had scrambled to find a replacement. They had Doc Melville for medical issues and LaVyrle Hunnecker at the beauty shop for anything else. Any additional set of ears—and costly ones at that, from what Nancy had mentioned—seemed above and beyond the necessary.
    Despite Helen’s misgivings, Grace Simpson had appeared to do quite well. The novelty of it had certainly drawn her clientele initially. “According to my therapist” seemed to be the anthem of the twenty-first century, even in a town as small as this.
    Ah, progress, Helen mused, and her stomach rumbled.
    “Are you hungry?” she asked, wondering if Nancy had dinner plans, though the girl was always so busy with work that Helen doubted it. “Nancy?”
    But the young woman didn’t seem to hear. She was digging deep inside her tote, a worried frown on her face. She started looking around on the sidewalk.
    “Are you all right?” Helen asked.
    Nancy bit her lower lip. “Grace was being so awful, and I left in such a hurry, that I must’ve forgotten one of the legal pads in my desk.”
    “Do you need to go back?” Helen asked. “Are they important?”
    “Yes, they’re important, and no, I don’t want to go back.” Nancy shuddered. “I’m not in the mood for another tongue-lashing, and I wouldn’t want Grace to find out that I haven’t shredded these yet.” She patted the leather tote. “They’re the handwritten notes for Grace’s book that I finished transcribing this morning. I was supposed to have cross-shredded everything already, but I haven’t had time. If she knew I still had them—” Nancy paused and drew a finger across her throat.
    “Aw, you poor, mistreated creature,” Helen teased and put an arm around the girl. “How about I buy you dinner? We’re not going to run into Attila the Therapist at the diner, are we?”
    “No, Grace won’t be eating at the diner tonight,” Nancy said and looked behind her. “But we’d better get a move on or we might bump into her here on the sidewalk. Grace has a six-thirty appointment with LaVyrle and then a dinner meeting in St. Louis with her publisher. She wouldn’t let me email the book, can you believe? She wants to hand over the sole hard copy to Harold Faulkner in person.”
    “Luddite,” Helen muttered, although she was enough of one herself. She preferred her old landline to the “smart” phone that Patsy, her eldest daughter and Nancy’s mother, had given her last Christmas. Maybe the phone was smart, but all its confusing bells and whistles made Helen feel pretty dumb.
    “Not so much a Luddite as paranoid,” Nancy said, shifting her tote bag so she could take her grandmother’s hand. With a final glance back, she tugged Helen along, walking so quickly that Helen felt out of breath by the time they’d reached the Main Street Diner.
    When they’d been seated in a booth and the waitress had brought them water and menus, Helen dared to ask, “So what do you think of the book? You’re the only one who’s seen it besides Grace, I presume.”
    “Eh,” Nancy said, burying her nose in the menu.
    “Don’t give me that,” Helen whispered, leaning forward. “You must have an opinion. Everyone in town’s already speculating about it.”
    “No kidding.” Nancy sighed and put the menu down. “I’ve already fielded dozens of calls about Grace’s manuscript. It got so bad today that I started letting them all go to voice mail. I don’t know why Grace is so worried about who sees the thing beforehand, when she’s been dropping hints about it all over River Bend, ticking people off for weeks.” Nancy set her elbows on the table and plunked her chin into her hands. “Now everyone who’s ever been in for a session is afraid she’s put them in there.” Nancy looked over at Helen, her forehead wrinkled. “Despite the fact that Grace used pseudonyms, people are freaked out about being recognized, and I can’t blame them. This isn’t L.A.