Chapter Fourteen
“I’m going to make a quick trip into town to buy some labels,” Josie said to the detective with the square head and jowly cheeks.
Despite his lumpish features and pockmarked skin, he had the clearest, most beautiful green eyes she’d ever seen.
Something about his face was very…comforting somehow, and she wasn’t sure why but it was.
“I’ll come with you.”
“Oh, you don’t have to—”
“Ma’am, with all due respect, it’s my job.”
“I didn’t realize you guys would be staying at my house today as well. I hope you’re not too bored.” She gave him a small, nervous laugh. She felt awkward. Was she supposed to entertain him somehow?
“I hope I am bored,” he said with a smile. He had an endearing gap between his front teeth. “That’ll mean you’re safe and sound.”
“True enough.”
“And you just go about your business today. I’ll stay out of your hair. I’m here in a just in case capacity.”
“Okay then. Thank you, Detective.”
“Jimmy.”
“Jimmy.”
He sat beside her as she drove into town, the sun rising in the sky, the morning clear and already beginning to warm.
She’d advertised her garage sale starting at noon, but she’d realized she had forgotten to buy stickers to use as price tags, so she needed to make the trip quickly and get back so she could get everything out and labeled.
Josie pulled into the twenty-four-hour grocery store parking lot.
“I’m just going to run in real fast—” But the detective was already climbing out of the car.
Apparently she had a shadow today. It was awkward, yes, but she couldn’t say it didn’t also bring relief.
If he wasn’t there, she’d have been jumpy all day, unsettled.
The visual of that rat forefront in her mind.
As it was, Jimmy’s large presence brought comfort.
Safety. And she appreciated it because it was important she focus on other things, namely earning a small amount of cash.
She’d come a long way since the days when she could barely leave her apartment without jumping at her own shadow, but it’d also been a long time since she didn’t glance over her own shoulder repeatedly out of habit alone.
She located the package of round stickers she needed and took them to the self-checkout lane.
As they were heading out of the store, Josie caught sight of the flyer advertising the sale she’d put up two weeks before.
Her footsteps stalled and she frowned, walking over to the large bulletin board where community members posted things under the headings the grocery store management had put at the top of the board: For Sale, Help Wanted, Coupons, etc.
Next to her flyer was pinned the printout of an old newspaper article.
Josie’s heart stalled, and her mouth went dry.
The headline read: Missing College Student Escapes Torture Chamber, and the subheading under that: Raped, starved, and impregnated, Josie Stratton begs public to help find her missing son.
The accompanying picture of her was jarring—expression vacant, eyes huge and haunted in her gaunt face, hair unkempt.
It was a still photo from the news conference she’d given from her hospital bed, begging the public to come forward with any information they might have.
She’d tried to clean herself up, thought she’d looked halfway decent, but looking at it now, she saw that, in actuality, she’d looked like a raving lunatic.
That day came back to her in all its wild desperation.
A vise gripped Josie’s rib cage and squeezed.
She let out a labored breath, pulling the printout down, including the flyer for the garage sale she’d planned, the flyer that included her address.
With both pieces of paper clutched in her fist, she walked quickly out of the store.
Blood roared in her ears, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she registered the heavy footsteps of Jimmy following along behind her.
She didn’t dare glance at his face, didn’t want to know if he’d read the article printout before she’d snatched it down.
Hated that he might have seen the picture, but hated even more that half the world had once seen her that way.
She got in her car and so did Jimmy. To her great relief, he didn’t utter a word, just sat with his big hands resting on his thighs, staring straight ahead as she pulled out of the lot.
She drove the few blocks to the town library, and though it wasn’t open yet, she got out of her car and walked to the window where various flyers were hung on the inside of the glass, including hers.
Just as at the grocery store, the same article printout had been placed right next to the flyer, overlapping it slightly, so that it would be impossible to look at one without also looking at the other.
Josie’s heart sank like a piece of lead.
Why?
In a daze, she turned and walked back to her car. Jimmy followed, head hung slightly, his hands in his pockets.
She drove to the end of the main street where people regularly hung flyers on a telephone pole and parked next to it. She got out of her car, swallowing down a small sob as she tore the flyer she’d hung along with the same article.
She got behind the wheel and pulled from the curb, her tires spinning and then squealing as she jammed on the accelerator too hard. They drove in silence for a few minutes before Jimmy asked quietly, “Any idea who would do that?”
She felt so damn breakable. Exposed. Skin peeled back, soul showing.
She’d had so much hope that this move was going to be good for her, just what she needed.
A place to settle. A purpose. She’d felt almost like a caterpillar finally shedding its cocoon, ready to spread her wings and fly.
Here, even though it was less than an hour away from the city where the crime against her had occurred, she didn’t think people knew her name, or if they did, it only registered as something that might sound familiar, something they couldn’t exactly place.
After a while, she’d dared to hope she’d just be Josie, the woman who ran the bed-and-breakfast outside town.
She’d escaped Marshall Landish almost a decade before.
She could finally be anonymous. Or so she’d thought.
This morning, that dream had crashed and burned.
“Josie?” Jimmy prompted. Her mind snapped back to the detective sitting in the seat next to her. Any idea who would do that?
She relaxed her hands on the wheel. “My cousin, maybe. He’s the only one I can think of who has a reason to make me hate my life here.” Make me want to run away far and fast.
The detective didn’t say anything, but she noted that his body seemed stiffer than it’d been on the ride into town.
She pulled into her driveway, and they both got out of the car.
She smelled roses and the fresh scent of the grass she’d mowed two days before.
The trees swayed, and the old sign at the end of the driveway for the B I haven’t been here long. I’m not familiar with all the surrounding neighbors.
” She knew the couple next to her and the family who lived across the way from visiting her aunt over the years.
But beyond that, she hadn’t met anyone. And now she wasn’t sure she’d muster up the courage to take a walk beyond her own property and introduce herself as she’d planned to do at some point. When she’d gotten the place cleaned up.
“I’m not either. Yet. I saw your flyer for the garage sale earlier this week and looked forward to meeting you and picking up a few things for our house.
” She reached down and moved a lock of flaxen hair off her toddler’s forehead.
The little boy was clinging to her leg and peering up at Josie shyly.
He had his mother’s bright blue eyes. Josie’s heart gave a small empty thud and then constricted tightly with longing.
Her own boy would be eight now. She’d missed this stage, and there was no way to ever get it back.
Grief, stronger than she’d felt in a long while, gripped her and made her knees feel weak.
“I’m recently divorced, so Milo and I here are sort of starting fresh, trying to make new memories.
” She put her palm over her toddler’s ear not pressed against her thigh.
“My ex is a real dirtbag,” she whispered.
“Oh, I’m…sorry about that.”
But Rain smiled. “Don’t be. We’re better off. But um”—she looked over Josie’s shoulder at the larger things she hadn’t yet moved into the garage—“I see you have a kitchen table and chairs, which is at the top of my priority list.”
“They’re yours if you want them,” Josie said, watching as Rain walked over to the pieces, looked at the stickers, and gave Josie a smile.
“Right in my price range,” she said. “It’s my lucky day.”
Jimmy approached them. “Need help lifting those into the van?” he asked, directing his question to Josie.
“That’d be great. Thanks,” she said.
Josie and Jimmy carried the pieces to the back of Rain’s van and loaded them inside as she stood back with Milo.
She ended up purchasing several pots and pans, a set of glasses, and a standing lamp as well, and once she was all packed up, she put her little boy in his car seat, climbed behind the wheel, and rolled the window down.
She reached over and wrote something on a scrap of paper from her console and handed it to Josie with a smile.
“Like I said, we’re right up the road. My address and phone number are on there, if you need anything or feel like visiting. ”
“That’s very nice of you,” Josie said. “Likewise on the visit.” She waved as the woman backed out and turned on the road and drove away.
A raindrop hit Josie’s cheek, and she walked toward the rest of the items that were still out, needing to get them back inside before the rain really started coming down.
And she supposed she’d need to set up her pots and pans under the inevitable leaks.
Despite the way the morning had started, she was grateful that she was ending the whole debacle on a positive note.
All right, so the garage sale hadn’t failed by all measures, just most. The woman named Rainbow had brightened her day a smidge, and she’d met someone new who, for a few minutes, had made her feel normal, unbroken.
She’d take it.