The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise

TITLES BY COLLEEN OAKLEY• • •The Mostly True Story of Tanner & LouiseThe Invisible Husband of Frick IslandYou Were There TooClose Enough to TouchBefore I Go BERKLEYAn imprint of Penguin Random House LLCpenguinrandomhouse.comCopyright © 2023 by Colleen OakleyReaders Guide copyright © 2023 by Penguin Random House LLCPenguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Oakley, Colleen, author.Title: The mostly true story of Tanner & Louise / Colleen Oakley.Description: New York: Berkley, [2023]Identifiers: LCCN 2022025790 (print) | LCCN 2022025791 (ebook) |ISBN 9780593200803 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593200810 (ebook)Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.Classification: LCC PS3615.A345 M67 2023 (print) |LCC PS3615.A345 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022025790LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022025791Cover design and illustration by Jonathan BushBook design by Alison Cnockaert, adapted for ebook by Kelly BrennanThis is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.pid_prh_6.0_142879847_c0_r0 Contents• • •CoverTitles by Colleen OakleyTitle PageCopyrightDedicationEpigraphChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12Chapter 13Chapter 14Chapter 15Chapter 16Chapter 17Chapter 18Chapter 19Chapter 20Chapter 21Chapter 22Chapter 23Chapter 24Chapter 25Chapter 26Chapter 27Chapter 28Chapter 29Chapter 30Chapter 31Chapter 32Chapter 33Chapter 34AcknowledgmentsReaders GuideDiscussion QuestionsAbout the Author For the women in my life who taught me how to be a woman in this world:Marion, Penny, Kathy, and Megan Louise: I just haven’t seen you like this in a while. I’m used to seeing you more sedate.Thelma: Well, I’ve had it up to my ass with sedate.—Thelma & Louise 1• • •A PHONE CALL“MY MOTHER IS missing.”“How old is your mother? How long has she been gone?” The cop’s voice was monotone, unperturbed, as if he got reports of mothers gone missing ten times a day. Who knows? Jules thought. Maybe he did.“Seventy-nine. No, wait, that’s what she tells everyone.” She paused. “Eighty-four. It’s been three days since any of us have heard from her.”“Do you talk to her every day?”“No, but she always picks up when I call, and she hasn’t been answering her phone all afternoon. So I called her hair salon, and she missed her hair appointment this morning. She never misses her hair appointment.”“I see. Have you been to her house?”Jules bristled. “Of course not! We all live, like, three, four hours away. Well, Charlie’s the closest, but he coaches his son’s baseball team, and there’s a tournament thing this weekend. Anyway, I called one of her bridge friends. He hasn’t seen her either. And she recently—” She stopped again. Her mother had always been quite a private person, and Jules didn’t feel comfortable airing her business to a stranger, but she supposed desperate times and all.“Recently what?”“Well, she received some . . . upsetting news.”The cop grunted. “Is it possible she just wanted to be alone?”“No—I’m telling you.” Jules’s voice went high-pitched. Frantic, to match the feeling creeping from her stomach up to her throat like a vine. “Something’s not right.”“OK, OK,” he said, and Jules pictured him holding his hands up as if to tell her to calm down in the same condescending manner her ex-husband used to. If there was anything worse in life than a man telling you to calm down when you were upset, she didn’t know what it was. “I’ll send someone 2• • •TEN DAYS EARLIERLOUISE WILT STARED at the letter.Or rather, she stared at the envelope she had quickly stuffed the letter back into after reading it. It sat at militaristic attention on the sideboard, propped up by a Lladró figurine of a puppy peeking out the top of a woman’s high-heeled boot. (Louise didn’t collect Lladró or even like it, really—it was all a bit too precious for her taste, like a Hallmark Christmas movie—but she had found that the older she got, the fewer gifts she received that coincided with her actual interests.) The letter had arrived yesterday without fanfare, the way most letters do, in a plain white envelope; one of the long, rectangular ones that a bill might come in, shoved between a coupon for a $6.99 all-you-can-eat buffet at China King and the latest issue of Southern Lady—a magazine Louise felt certain someone must have subscribed her to in jest.Thanks to a book she had read not too long ago, fittingly titled Letters That Changed the World (also a gift, but from whom, she could not recall), Louise was familiar with the idea that one letter could indeed change everything.Abraham Lincoln grew his infamous beard based on the advice of an eleven-year-old letter writer, Grace Bedell, who stated directly and to Louise’s delight, “You would look a great deal better for your face is too thin.”Tennessee House of Representatives member Harry Thomas Burn cast the deciding vote for women’s suffrage thanks to a letter from his mother, Febb Ensminger Burn, admonishing him, “Don’t forget to be a good boy.”Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin after receiving a letter from her sister urging her to “write something to make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery