Chapter Fifteen #2
“I used the last of the change that I’d thrown into the console to buy gas to get here, so I can relate to your story.
” I went on to tell them about being so sleepy that I thought I had killed a person but found out it was a tumbleweed.
“I had one package of crackers in the car, and I filled my water bottle in a bathroom sink at a service station.”
“You really weren’t kidding when you said you were starving when you got here,” Rosie said.
“I was not—but why were you coming here on a bus, anyway, Scarlett?”
“Can I trust you to keep my secret?” she asked.
She couldn’t be in witness protection, because they must sign their former life away. That meant Scarlett wouldn’t have told anyone, not even Rosie.
“I can keep a secret,” I finally answered.
“This goes back to Matilda,” Scarlett said.
“She helped support more than one women’s shelter in several states.
She had friends who knew how to go about getting women in really bad situations what they needed—like new papers, jobs, homes, and so on.
I’m one of those women. I came here from Louisiana and changed my name to Scarlett because of the heroine in Gone with the Wind.
I wanted to be tough like her instead of a frightened little rabbit who let a man beat on her. ”
I felt as if someone had knocked the wind clean out of me. No one had ever laid a hand on me. If they had, they would probably be lying in a shallow grave somewhere. “Did you . . . What . . . How . . . ,” I stammered.
“I am not a victim—not anymore, so don’t pity me,” Scarlett scolded. “I am a strong woman who will never let a man make me feel less than what I am.”
“Can I ask what happened?” I asked.
“My mother went to prison for drugs. There was no father in the picture. Not ever. My grandmother took me in, but she had to hold down two jobs to support the two of us. So I moved out to live with my boyfriend Billy before I graduated. I worked at a convenience store after school and on weekends, and I handed over my paycheck to him every Friday night. By Sunday morning, he had used all of it for liquor and beer for him and his sleazy friends. And I had more than a few bruises to prove that he was a mean drunk, but by that time my grandmother had passed away, and even if I left him, I didn’t have a place to go or the money to get away from him. ”
Rosie laid a hand on her arm. “You are strong . . .”
“Yes, and I am independent. I don’t need anyone to complete me,” she said, finishing the statement. “That’s what you and Matilda taught me to say to myself every morning before I even got out of bed.”
“And it worked, right?” I asked.
“It did,” she answered. “I was a victim when I put up with Billy’s abuse.
My grandmother had tried to talk sense into me, but I wouldn’t listen.
He loved me, and I loved him—or so I thought.
I graduated from high school, and he thought I would work full-time and make more money.
But the store only needed a part-time clerk.
He got so angry that when he got tired of hitting me with his fists, he picked up a ball bat and worked on me with it.
If a neighbor hadn’t heard the ruckus, he would have killed me.
He ran when the cops showed up, and an ambulance took me to the hospital. ”
“Holy . . .” I stopped myself from completing that thought.
Scarlett forced a weak smile. “A sweet nurse and a lady police officer talked me into filing charges and going to a battered women’s home. Billy took a plea deal and went to jail, and Matilda took me in when I was able to travel. End of story.”
“No wonder you have trust issues,” I whispered.
“Yep, and that’s why Grady and I have dated for a year. I wanted to be sure that he was the kind of man who would never hurt me, physically or mentally.”
“What happened when you had your first argument?” I asked, still in a bit of a shock that she was telling me something so personal.
“We didn’t see each other for several days.
Both of us were miserable, and I finally drove up to his house and told him that he wasn’t ever to raise his voice to me again over something so trivial as him sitting in the passenger seat of my car.
We talked . . .” She really smiled this time. “Plug your ears, Rosie.”
“I’m a grown woman,” Rosie said. “I know that you had hot and heavy makeup sex.”
Rosie might have known all about it, or maybe just guessed, but she still blushed as she spoke.
“You’ve had makeup sex, right?” Scarlett asked.
“Nope,” I answered honestly. “If you never get to that magic date when you have a fight, you don’t ever get to experience that kind of thing.
I’ve only had one-night stands and a few forty-eight-hour relationships.
Always with guys I knew and trusted from poker games, so don’t be thinking I picked up men in bars.
I never sleep with married men, and I’m up front about there being no strings attached. ”
Scarlett and Rosie both nodded in agreement.
“What about Jackson? Did you shake hands at the end of the time you spent at his trailer?” Rosie asked.
“No, he raised my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles when he dropped me off at the trailer yesterday. From the romance novels I have read, that’s not even first base.”
“But it is super romantic,” Scarlett said.
Rosie stood up and brought out the biscuit-making bowl. “Enough about all this. I’m going to make our brunch, and then we’ll get down to business.”
“One more question, Scarlett.”
“Just one?” Rosie frowned.
I crossed my heart with my forefinger. “I promise. What was your name before you became Scarlett?”
“My name was Stacy, and the son of a bitch—sorry, Rosie—that put me in the hospital said that when he got out of jail, he would hunt me down and kill me. So Matilda worked with the woman at the women’s shelter where I was living, and the two of them got me new papers.
Scarlett rose out of the ashes that used to be Stacy. ”
Was I ready to burn my poker identity, Clara Williams? Not just yet.