Chapter 2 #2
Deputy Derry was in the process of unlocking the cell door when she opened her eyes.
Sympathy was etched over his face as he waved her out of the cell and directed her to sit in the visitor’s chair at his desk.
He was inviting her to join them and for some reason that made her want to cry more.
Ms. Audrey picked up her desk phone and called Carolina’s Bed and Breakfast reserving a room for Lauren for the night.
“…and Lina, she says she’s good with money. Maybe she can help with that issue before she leaves.”
After hanging up the phone Ms. Audrey smiled at Lauren mysteriously as Jessie passed around utensils. These people were being too nice and helpful. She cautioned herself to stay on alert.
“Like I said,” Ms. Audrey stated, addressing Lauren. “A lot of businesses in Shrouded Lake are suffering and our city controller, who’s supposed to be figuring out ways to get this town back in good standing, is an inept lazy so-and-so.”
“That’s my uncle, Ms. Audrey!” Derry protested as he handed Lauren her food.
“I know who that man is! Don’t mean Bailey Joe Williams ain’t lousy at his job,” Ms. Audrey said, arranging her napkins and plasticware beside her container of food.
“Well, I didn’t say he wasn’t.” Derry smiled. “I just felt obligated to point out the family connection.”
Audrey and Jessie laughed, and Lauren smiled as she bit into the mac and cheese, then the yams. Chewing slowly, she groaned, savoring.
She couldn’t remember how many months it’d been since she had a down-home meal. Full fat, full shuggah…. She snorted.
I’ll eat better tomorrow, she promised herself. She’d been sustaining herself on fast food and junk food since she left home, but it was this meal that she would blame for her weight gain, she decided, shoving another spoonful into her mouth.
“Give me my money, Ms. Green!” Derry said. “What did I say, huh? The best.”
She reached for her bag with one hand and for the mustard greens with the other. She didn’t give a fig about losing this bet.
She sighed and moaned again as the flavors in the greens filled her mouth.
“You know, I only hear that sound when I’ve given my woman some good, good lovin’,” Jessie said.
“Which means unlessin’ he’s watching some sex show,” Derry said. “He ain’t never heard that sound.”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about Derry; my girl don’t leave my house until she’s had her good time. Only problem is that she’s gotta get there fast because my momma don’t let me have guests over after her bedtime.”
Lauren swallowed her laughter and almost choked. Jessie couldn’t have meant to say what he said out loud.
Watching the three of them talk and tease made her smile.
She suspected this was how they regularly were with each other.
When was the last time she and her family had been together like this?
When had they stopped prioritizing spending time together?
Hell, even when they were together, it was different, always this underlying…
tension, and she now realized it existed even when she was young.
For fifteen minutes straight, the deputies tried to one up each other as Ms. Audrey pretended to discourage them, yet her mm-hmms and instigating comments only sent the deputies’ stories into the realm of unbelievable.
Lauren smiled but began to believe that after witnessing her moment of despair in the cell they were trying to lighten her spirit, lessen her hurt and rage.
“What the hell is going on in here?”
Lauren’s gaze narrowed but she held on to the faintest smile as both deputies stood abruptly, silenced by embarrassment and fear.
Ms. Audrey efficiently packed away her meal and placed it back in the bag. She folded her arms across her desk and gazed up at her idiot boss like an innocent schoolgirl who hadn’t been right in the thick of their foolishness.
Lauren continued to eat as if Sheriff Stillwater didn’t exist. She broke the silence by asking, “What do you think is going on, Sheriff? I mean really, with your position one would think your observation skills would be a damned sight better than they are.” Then she looked beyond him, drawing attention to the fact that a certain elderly woman was not in his custody.
“You can’t identify a whole drunk driver and, gasp”—she wiped her mouth and shut the lid on her food—“you don’t even recognize people having a cordial meal together.
You should be on your knees thanking them for saving your crooked ass from a lawsuit instead of acting like they’ve done something worse than extending courtesy to a stranger. ”
“Audrey, isn’t it after your quitting time?” he asked, ignoring Lauren.
“Well, will you look at that, I hadn’t even noticed how much time had passed. I guess I’ll gather my things and make my way home.”
Ms. Audrey moved so slowly she might as well have sat back down to watch what would happen.
“Derry, why is she out of her cell?” the sheriff asked.
“It’s not actually mine,” Lauren stated.
“Well Sheriff, Ms. Green hadn’t eaten and she wanted her phone, and I didn’t want to give it to her but she’s not under arrest, then she threatened to sue us—”
“More like pointed out some facts,” she corrected.
“Then she pointed out some facts, and we gave it to her because I ain’t got no money to pay for getting sued, you know I don’t,” the young deputy said pensively.
“We were going out for our evening meal, and we invited Ms. Lauren to join us since she’s been on the road so long,” Deputy Jessie stepped in.
The sheriff looked at his three staff members then finally settled his murky, weird-colored eyes on her.
“Woman, the day I get on my knees and ask for thanks is the day you leave my city and promise never to come back. You’re free to go Ms. Green. Derry, take her to her car.”
“Thank you, Sheriff,” Lauren said, gathering her bag and the remainder of her food. “But because of your own choices, you won’t be watching me leave today. Ms. Audrey, do you mind pointing me in the direction of the bed and breakfast?”
“Sure thing sweetie, I’ll meet you out front once you get your car.”
Bags in hand, Lauren linked her arm around Derry’s—believing it would further aggravate the sheriff—and let him escort her toward the door. “Like I said before Deputy Derry, you are way too cute to sue. Don’t let your idiot boss bully you, you’re doing a wonderful job.”
Despite her travel funk, baggy clothes, and box braids pulled back in a sloppy bun, she walked out of that building with a switch in her hips and her head held high.
The warm afternoon air had apparently fled with the sunlight.
Lauren leaned into Derry’s body heat as he walked her to the parking lot.
“The town feels abandoned and eerie at night,” she whispered.
No open stores, no people out walking the streets, a dark so black surrounded them making her feel that if the lights went out, they would cease to exist. And despite all that, she felt unusually free.
Then her hunter-green Toyota 4Runner came into view and reminded her why she was here and not at home.
That numb, dead-inside feeling returned.
Unable to muster a smile, she thanked Deputy Derry for dinner again.
“Well, if I’m not in the doghouse and you’re around tomorrow, I’ll meet you at Lou’s and this time your meal will be on me.”
Tipping his hat, he walked away, and she climbed into her vehicle and drove out of the lot and back to the station where Ms. Audrey stood on the sidewalk.
Part of her just wanted to drive away, put this place in her rearview and continue healing on the road.
But the way the sheriff had treated her; she couldn’t let that shit slide.
She had to take a stand, fight not run, or else the universe would continue to create situations where people felt emboldened to discount and disrespect her.
Audrey opened the front door of the station after pulling her car in front of the building to wait for that shrew of a woman.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Audrey reprimanded Santiago.
“There is no just reason for you to have locked Ms. Green in that cell while Veronica Archer stumbles through life free as a dodo bird.”
She’d pointed her finger at him, jabbed it in the air straight to his heart, then stomped out down the three stairs as his most senior deputy walked up them.
“You sure have pissed off a lot of people today, Sheriff,” Cutter Banes drawled as he entered the building and closed the door. “What happened up on Old Lotty Road anyway?”
Santiago tossed his hat on Audrey’s desk and rubbed his palms over his face.
“Veronica was drunk off her ass again and I needed to clear the pass to get traffic moving. This outsider drives up, and I swear to you Cutter, if you mated a shrew with a dragon, that spitfire would’ve been its first born.
The way she…” He ground his teeth and shook his head.
“I don’t know what the hell happened. One minute I have the situation under control and the next…
” He recalled the satisfaction he felt throwing that woman over his shoulder, the way her body molded against him…
“I told you, delaying this Archer situation is doing more harm than good. You know what to do. Putting it off is creating more problems—bigger problems—than what you experienced today.”
Santiago sighed heavily.
Cutter was right. As was the castigating, indignant…
loud voice of Lauren Green reverberating through his head.
He imagined her in front of him demanding he do the right thing now and not when it was most convenient for him.
Had Veronica Archer been anyone other than an Archer, married into one of the remaining wealthy White families who brought money to Shrouded Lake over a century ago, she would’ve been sitting in his cruiser before she’d even got the chance to assault Roan, and definitely before that hellion reached the scene.