Chapter Four
Libby sat up in bed—heart pounding and pulse racing—when she opened her eyes. She thought she must have had one of her recurring nightmares, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember what it was. She checked the time on her phone—5:28 a.m. She shut off the alarm she’d set for five thirty. The old metal springs squeaked when she pushed back the covers and threw her legs over the side of the bed. The sound reminded her of what had greeted her every morning when she wiggled in her bed at the Jefferson house.
She crossed the shiny, clean tile floor in her bare feet and put on a pot of coffee. While it dripped, she made the bed, got dressed in her running clothes, then poured a cup and sat down on the edge of the sofa to drink it. A flash of the nightmare came back to her, but it was gone so fast that she had trouble hanging on to it. Then another one hit, and cold chills chased down her spine.
She’d had bad dreams since she was a kid, when Victoria started leaving her alone in the big old two-story house while she went to the casino. She had imagined all kinds of monsters and bad people coming to kidnap her and would often sleep on the sofa until she heard her grandmother opening the front door. She would race upstairs and jump into her bed and pretend to be asleep. Sometimes Victoria would check on her, but most of the time, she just went on to bed without even peeking inside Libby’s bedroom.
The worst of the recurring dreams started the night she had watched a scary movie—at least, it was terrifying to her—about a ten-year-old girl who had been abducted from her house when her parents were away. They had never found her or her body. That movie had stayed with her for three decades, and she still couldn’t shake it.
“For goodness’ sakes, I’m thirty years old,” Libby fussed at herself. “You’d think I’d outgrow these scary dreams. Sure, I was only ten when Victoria started leaving me alone—and in spite of her warnings not to watch scary movies, I did. But that was in the past.”
Libby remembered one night in particular, when she had actually gone to sleep in her own bed. She was fourteen that summer and should have been used to staying alone, but she had had another case of night terrors, and it was so real that she screamed out in her sleep. Evidently, Victoria had just gotten home from a late night, because she was really angry at Libby for yelling.
“For God’s sake, girl, what is the matter with you?” Victoria had asked.
“There was a man in the house,” Libby had declared.
“Bull crap!” Victoria had huffed. “It was just a bad dream. You’ve been watching those scary movies again, haven’t you? I told you not to watch anything that wasn’t PG rated, and now you have to pay the price.”
“No, it was real,” Libby had protested.
“It couldn’t be real, Libby. How do you know that someone was in the house? Did you leave the doors open?”
Libby hadn’t been able to shake the very real dream. “He was here.”
“Holy smokin’ hell!” Victoria’s voice had gone all high and squeaky. “You might be right. A convict is on the loose. I heard it on the radio on the way home. Did he go into my room? Did he find my stash of winnings?”
Libby shook the memory from her head and finished off her first cup of coffee. The nightmare varied from time to time. This time, she had run from the faceless man and made it out the front door before he tackled her and dragged her back into the house.
“Someday I’m going to win—even if it’s only in my dreams,” she said. Not today, though. Today she planned to run a couple of miles, come home, and take a shower before she went to work. Amanda had advised her to go to therapy to get past the nightmares, but she couldn’t bear to tell another person about her life.
In her opinion, talking about her past would make all the memories rise to the top.
She had her hand on the doorknob when her phone rang. She jogged across the floor and answered it without even looking at the caller ID.
Amanda rattled off questions. “Did you take the job? Do you like it there? I need pictures.”
“I got the job. I think I’m going to like it here, and I will send pictures today,” Libby answered. “And I will send an address so you can ship the things I left behind. I’ll have to ask Opal and Minilee how they get their mail out here. Counting me and Benny’s dog, this place has a population of five.”
“Well,” Amanda giggled, “you did say you wanted out of the big-city life, and I can hear excitement in your voice. Got to get ready for work now, but I’ll look for pictures of the whole population—including your boss—very soon. Dolly told me that he’s quite a handsome guy. What do you think?”
“No thoughts yet.” Libby crossed her fingers behind her back. “Talk to you this evening?”
“It’s a date,” Amanda said and ended the call.
Rays of orange peeked over the eastern horizon, turning the dark blobs into trees, abandoned oil wells, and a few cows while she kicked up dust on her morning run. Running outside in the fresh morning air was a whole new experience for Libby. In Austin, she had gone to the small gym located in the middle of the apartment complex and run three miles on the treadmill each morning. Today her watch beeped when she had gone a mile, and she spun around and started back.
She could see the convenience store ahead when a car passed and sent up a cloud of dust that settled over her. Just great. Now she’d have to wash her hair and blow it dry before she could go to work. Forget about making oatmeal for breakfast. She would have to make do with an energy bar. Even if she had to go hungry, she was determined not to be a minute late on her first day on the job. And since the car that passed her hadn’t come back, she figured there was already one customer who wanted to check out the merchandise.
“Good morning!” Benny fell into step beside Libby. She looked downright cute in dark slacks and a silky-looking shirt that matched her crystal clear blue eyes. Her almost-black hair smelled faintly of coconut with a hint of vanilla.
“Looks like we’ve already got potential customers.” He nodded toward the parking lot, which was already half-full of vehicles.
“I figured we’d have one person at the very least waiting for the doors to open, because a car passed me when I was out for my morning run,” she told him.
“If I’d known that you ran every morning, I would have advised you to keep off the road—especially on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The dust seldom settles from morning to evening,” he said as they crossed the parking lot. His hand brushed against hers, but he was careful not to let it happen again. “Behind your place and my trailer, there’s an old logging path that makes for good running. If you reach the Red River, you’ve gone about a mile and a half, so there and back makes for a three-mile run.”
“Thanks. I’ll do that tomorrow,” she said.
“I leave at five thirty every morning, if you want a partner.” He opened the door, flipped on the lights, and headed back toward the office. “Welcome to your first day. Let me show you the easy way Grandpa taught me to do things.”
“Keep a few Sold tags, complete with numbers on the back, in your hip pocket,” she said. “Write the name of the person buying the item on the bottom in the white space, along with the number on the price tag attached to the piece. When they load their merchandise, they have to show that bill of sale to show that the item is paid for, right?”
“Your grandmother taught you well.” Benny gave her a wink and opened a file cabinet drawer, then handed her a stack of tags plus a roll of tape.
She shoved the tags and the tape into the pocket of her slacks, picked up a pen from his desk, and headed out of the office. “Where do they pay for their purchases?”
“Right here in the office. The tags on the items have a tear-off at the bottom with an inventory number on it, so tape or staple that to the Sold paper,” he answered. “I enter that number into the computer and get all the information for payment; then I print out a receipt. They can either carry their small items out or back their trucks or trailers up to the doors and load up the big ones.”
“We don’t provide loading?” she asked.
“No, ma’am, but we do let them borrow our dollies to help them get them out. They’re responsible for their own packing quilts.”
“Okay, then, I’m going to go wait on customers,” she said and headed out of the office.
“Now there goes one classy lady,” Benny whispered under his breath.