Read Online The Miss Fortune Series: Nearly Departed (Kindle Worlds Novella) by Shari Hearn - Free Book Online

his ear closer to it. “What’s that?” He looked at Gertie.
“Your purse is pleading with me to shoot it and put it out of its misery.”
    Ida Belle
laughed. “I told you something was living inside that thing.”
    French Fry
shuddered. “Honey, don’t look now, but America’s Most Wanted seasons one
through five are hiding in this thing.”
    Gertie
pulled herself up from the couch, stormed over to French Fry, and yanked her
purse from him. She opened it and rummaged inside before pulling out a bundle
of photos. “Here.” She slapped them into his open palm.
    He looked
down at the photos and gasped. “What is this?” He took a closer look. “It’s
that old biddy from your funeral.”
    “Do you
think you can match me with the photos?” I asked.
    “We brought
wigs and clothes too,” Gertie said.
    “Well, of
course I can match the photos. I’m the best makeup artist around. But I will
hate myself for doing it. All during the after-party at Francine’s she kept
staring at me in my dress and asking what I did with my manly parts. That’s plain
rude.”
    Gertie
shrugged. “It’s not like we all haven’t wondered.”
    French Fry
folded his arms and shot Gertie a cold stare.
    Ida Belle
set her mug on the coffee table and reached behind her, under her waistband,
retrieving her Glock and setting it on the table next to the mug.
    “Do not
make me use that, French Fry. I’ll be grumpy for the rest of the day.”
    “Fine,”
French Fry said. “I will transform this beautiful woman into one of God’s
rejects. But I’ll need space to work my magic, an unending supply of coffee,
and there’s a Jerry Springer marathon on TV today. I need it on in the
background for inspiration.”
    After
ordering Gertie and Ida Belle to another room and setting up his supplies on
the coffee table, French Fry went to work.
    “So, what’s
your real name?” I asked French Fry while Jerry Springer took a
commercial break.
    He muted
the sound. “Bradley Simms. What’s yours?”
    I shifted
in Cookie’s wheelchair. “Sandy-Sue Morrow.”
    “Sandy-Sue’s
your drag name,” he said, pulling on my extensions. “Underneath these
extensions is a short boy cut.”
    “I had an
accident with a curling iron,” I lied. “I had to cut it off. So I went with
extensions.”
    “Don’t lie
to French Fry,” he said with his breathy French Fry voice.
    “I’m not
lying.”
    His voice
deepened. “Look, sister, my entire life has been built on a lie. So I can
recognize when someone’s hiding something.”
    My pulse
quickened. Who is this guy?
    And did I
have to worry about him?
    “Fine, it’s
okay you don’t tell me. Lord knows I didn’t tell people who I really was until
I was, oh… about thirty. But, you know what? The problem with shutting down a
part of your life is that all your energy goes into maintaining the lie. The
authentic parts of you get lost. And that’s all I’m going to say on the
matter.”
    I sat in
silence while he clipped my hair up and slipped one of Gertie’s wigs over my
head. I knew he had a point. Living a lie was taking a toll. I tried to imagine
my relationship with Carter without the lie of being Sandy-Sue.
    Hello,
Carter, I know you thought I was a librarian, but I’m actually a CIA assassin.
I will disappear for weeks at a time and you won’t have a way to contact me or
know if I’m alive or dead. And when I’m home I can’t talk about my work. I
might sometimes appear withdrawn. That’s just me working through the images of
a successful kill. You’ll get used to it.
    And then I
imagined his response.
    Thanks for
the warning. Have a nice life. Bye-bye.
    “So, when
people found out who the real Bradley was, did you lose friends?”
    French Fry
shook his head. “No. I found out who my real friends were.”
    I sighed. That
was the problem. I didn’t want to know who would stay and who would walk away.
    It took two
hours of adding prosthetics and makeup, creating lines and wrinkles, and