Do Unto Others

“So answer me, Junebug,” Eula Mae’s voice rose. “I don’t know anything about Beta getting killed or this Shannon girl getting shot. Why are you here to see me?” Junebug set his mouth in a thin line. “We found a letter there, Eula Mae. A letter apparently from your sister to a literary agent, asking about representing a book she’d written called The Rose of San Jacinto. ” Eula Mae did not withstand adversity as well as her heroines. Her face blanched, the lines in it seeming to darken as she frowned. One hand flew up to her forehead, like a startled bird returning to roost. “I-I-,” she stuttered. I saw Billy Ray starting to uncoil like a striking rattler. “Perhaps, Junebug,” I suggested, “Eula Mae should have some legal representation present if you’re going to accuse her or-” “No!” Eula Mae thundered, and I fell silent. “No lawyers,” she whispered, and her eyes flicked across each of our faces. “No one else. Who else knows about this, Junebug?” “Just the three of us,” he answered softly. “I-I want your help. Each of you, please,” she whispered. This woman seemed crushed; not like the Eula Mae who always tried to run the library board meetings, who played her local fans like a string quartet, who had beaten the odds to make a living as a writer. Even her curly, uncontrollable hair was listless. Her eyes, usually sparkling with gossip and merriment, stared at the floor. “What kind of help?” I asked. “I want you to help my sister,” she said, which left us all silent. Eula Mae waved a tired hand and began an explanation. “A few weeks back the Baptist church committee came by looking for items for their rummage sale. I gave them a box of old books that had been my sister Patty’s. I didn’t think to look through them-they were just old books of hers, writers she’d admired as a teacher. Welty, Balzac, Thoreau, Turgenev, Robert Penn Warren. I gave them those books and never gave it a second thought.” “Till Beta paid you a visit,” I said, finishing her sentence for her. Eula Mae stared at me and through me. It didn’t matter what I’d said. “She’d gone through the box I donated, and found a letter Patty wrote to an agent-about her book.” Eula Mae’s tongue flickered across her lips. “I never knew Patty even wrote a draft of such a letter. She never sent one. She was a wonderful writer, but she was just too afraid of rejection. I kept urging her to send it, but she didn’t want to hear anyone say no to it. Then she thought people around here would tease her for writing a romance novel. I suggested she publish it under a pseudonym, but she just laughed. She said if she ever did, it’d be under a joke name like Jocelyn Lushe. She just made up that name out of the blue.” Tears formed in Eula Mae’s eyes.

Junebug offered her a handkerchief and she took it, wiping her eyes.

“After Patty died, I just hated the thought of that manuscript sitting there. I started submitting it, but I was afraid no one would touch it if they knew a dead woman had written it. Those romance houses, they want to know they can buy a book and expect others to follow from the same author, build a series and an audience. So I said the book was mine, and I used the Jocelyn Lushe name. It didn’t seem like I was taking credit for her, or stealing from her, because it wasn’t my name. It was her pseudonym. I didn’t plan on continuing it-I just wanted to get Patty’s book published. So I did. And it did really well; it made a lot of money. The publisher started asking me for my next manuscript.” She paused and wiped her eyes again. “I didn’t want to stop. Writing those books was like having Patty back around. She’d had gobs of notes for ideas, so I went through those and wrote another book. Then I got a three-book contract, and I just had to keep writing them.” “Stealing from a dead woman-your own sister-to make yourself famous,” Billy Ray snorted, shaking his head at Eula Mae with contempt. He got as good as he gave. “Think what you want, Billy Ray,” she snapped. “There have been eleven Jocelyn Lushe books. I wrote ten of them, and they’ve done damned well. I didn’t steal from Patty; I kept her dream alive. I did all the hard work.” “But Beta found out,”

Junebug prompted. She nodded, miserably. “Beta found out. She came to me with the letter. I’d never known Patty had written it; it would have been just like her to write it, then not mail it. Just slipped into that book to mail when she got her courage up. I guess her cancer took all her courage.” She dabbed at her eyes, and when she looked up again they blazed, free of tears. “Beta told me, as payback for helping to remove her from the library board, that she’d expose the first book as being Patty’s, not mine. She’d call my publisher, the Romance Writers of America, the news stations in Austin. It could have been very… professionally devastating.” “So why didn’t she just do that?” Billy Ray demanded. “She wanted money. Money for her silence,”