Runaway Mistress (17 page)

She hit Send and leashed Alice up to take her to the park. They had a nice long walk and sat for a while under a tree. When they got home she turned on the computer to do her usual Internet search for any new mentions of herself or the Nobles. The computer told her she had mail. Louise had answered right away.

Dear Doris,

It sounds like you may have found a home. A family, however oddly gathered. Think about trusting. It might be the way to go. You’ve held your breath just about long enough. I think you’re safe. At any rate, I can vouch for them.

Love,

Louise.

The next morning after the breakfast rush, while Jennifer was taking a break with Adolfo’s morning newspaper, she looked up to see Sylvia standing in the doorway of the diner. She just stood there, looking uncertain. She should have had a contrite look on her face, but she didn’t. Not even under these circumstances.

“Come on in, Sylvia. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee,” Jennifer said.

Once invited, she stomped into the diner quickly, sliding into Jennifer’s booth. She had attempted to cover her blackened eyes, but it didn’t take a very close inspection to see the purple lurking there.

“You okay?” Jennifer asked.

“Fine. You didn’t say anything to Hedda, did you?”

She shrugged. “Everyone here played it off as an accident—”

“It
was
an accident!”

“In the middle of a brawl.” Jennifer hadn’t thought about any of this in advance. In fact, she never expected to see Sylvia. But once the confrontation was here, she wasn’t going to play dumb. Sylvia should be apologizing rather than defending herself.

“Just so you didn’t say anything.”

“She’s pretty smart, your Hedda.”

“I don’t need her giving me that look, like I’ve been a bad girl. I’m the mother.”

I would beg to differ, came instantly to Jennifer’s mind, but she held her tongue for Hedda’s sake.

“Does it hurt? Your nose?”

“Yes, if you must know.”

“It doesn’t look broken. But your eyes—”

“I’m okay. I’m, you know…That sort of thing doesn’t happen to me very often. Bad judgment.”

“Sure.”

“I mean it!”

“I’m not arguing! Jesus!” Jennifer took a breath. “Do you have some makeup in your purse?” Jennifer asked.

“Yeah.”

“Come here,” she said, sliding out of the booth and heading for the bathroom. “Let me see what you have.”

Sylvia followed, but slowly.

“Come on—let’s see what you have for makeup. Maybe I can help?”

“You?”

“Yes, funny as it sounds. Come on now, don’t play shy.”

Sylvia cautiously pulled out a makeup bag, making sure Jennifer couldn’t see any of the other contents of her purse. Jennifer poked through the makeup for a moment. She was pretty well stocked with eraser, base, powder, shadow, liner. “We’d be in better shape if Gloria were here—she has a veritable cosmetic counter in her purse. But I can work with this.”

She moistened a paper towel and dabbed gently at Sylvia’s bruises so she could start from scratch. She dotted the area with white eraser, covered that with flesh-colored concealer, topped it with base, repeated that process again, and then finished it off with powder. Then, to put the focus elsewhere on the woman’s face, she lined her eyes and lips and applied liberal shadow, mascara and lipstick. In just a few moments, the black eyes were barely visible.

“Yeah. Better. I wondered how I was going to explain this at work.”

“You can always go with the accident story.”

Not only was Sylvia apparently not big on apologies, she was also not given to thanks. She nodded and said, “I’d better get going. I’ll be late.”

“Sure. Take it easy.”

Sylvia left the bathroom, head down, and was out of the diner in seconds.

Phew, Jennifer thought. She must be a dream to live with.

When her shift was over, Jennifer went to the supermarket at the far edge of town, a place she’d only been once before. She preferred the small corner market where everything seemed to be fresh and there was no waiting. But, for what she had in mind, she needed a larger store. She bought several magazines—all spring editions for teenage girls.

High school had changed a lot in the past couple of decades. It used to be 8:00 a.m. to three, no matter what. Now there were split shifts, releases, early outs and all kinds of different schedules in the same school. Hedda went to school from 7:00 a.m. till 1:00 p.m., took six straight classes without a lunch break, then went to her job at the diner.

When Jennifer got to the diner at three in the afternoon, Buzz had gone on an errand. Adolfo was at the grill, Hedda was behind the counter and there were three girls in a booth, drinking Cokes, sharing a large order of fries and laughing. Jennifer hadn’t even noticed that Hedda was grimacing. “Hey,” Jennifer said, fanning out the magazines. “I brought us something fun.”

“What’s that?”

“I thought we could look through them, get some ideas for prom dresses.”

The diner grew suddenly quiet.

Hedda grabbed the magazines quickly and said, “Shh.” She took the stack to the far booth, the one that Adolfo favored when he wasn’t at the grill and where Jennifer liked to read her morning paper. She slid in, her back to the counter, so she could keep an eye on the only customers in the diner.

Jennifer slid in across from her. “Is it a secret?” she asked in a whisper.

“From them,” she whispered back.

“Why?”

Hedda leaned across the table. “Those would be the mean girls.”

Jennifer straightened sharply, then looked over her shoulder cautiously. Though they all had different hairstyles, they still seemed to have more in common than unique traits. One had short, spiky blond hair, one had long, straight blond hair and the third had her medium-length blond hair pulled up and clipped on the top of her head.

Why are the mean girls
always
beautiful blondes? Jennifer found herself wondering.

And then she wondered if the fact that the most popular girls in high school always seemed to have that enviable mane of golden hair had anything to do with her choice to color her hair that way for so long. “I was blond for years,” she confessed. “Are they mean to you?”

“Me and everyone,” she said with a shrug. “Well…Not everyone.”

“Why are they mean to you?”

“It’s not personal,” she said. “It’s about always being the new kid. You know—you have to
earn
your entrée.” She took one magazine off the stack and opened it on the tabletop. “But I don’t think I want into that little group.”

No sooner did she say that than there was a series of noises—the clink of dishes, a gasp, a splash, giggles. A Coke was tipped and spilled off the tabletop and onto the floor. Hedda sprang out of her booth and went for a rag to clean it up.

The girls in the booth sat idle, a snicker here and there. Usually when there was a spill at a table, people would scramble to grab napkins and start mopping up themselves before the waitress could even get there, but not these girls. Clearly the Coke had been spilled on purpose and they were getting some kind of perverse pleasure out of watching Hedda clean up.

“So, Cinderella, you going to the prom?” one of them asked while the other two covered their snotty smiles with their hands.

Hedda just cleaned up; she didn’t answer.

“Hedda,” the girl demanded. “Are you going to the prom? I asked!”

Hedda looked up from where she crouched to wipe the floor. “I haven’t decided.”

“Sure,” one of them said.

“Yeah, right,” said another.

It took everything Jennifer had not to get up and intervene in both the cleanup and the snide remarks. By the time she thought her willpower was almost spent, Hedda had already schlepped her wet rags back behind the counter, and the girls were left to whisper among themselves. Thankfully, inaudibly.

Always being the new kid, Hedda had said. They must move around a lot. And they’d been in the motel until their little house came up for rent.

Jennifer had not had girlfriends for much the same reason. She was always new at the school, plus Cherie, being crazy as a loon, wasn’t someone Jennifer wanted people to know. And she had to stay pretty close to home to look after Cherie, because who knew what state she was in? She never let anyone get very close. When she was teased because her clothing was shabby, or she was in want of a shower, she closed her ears. Since she couldn’t change anything, she made herself impenetrable.

She remembered herself as a shy and morose kid, but Hedda, for all she went through, was cheerful and open. She didn’t play up to these girls with her happy spirit, but among people who were nice to her, she was every bit the extrovert.

As Hedda was coming around the counter, the girls got out of the booth and sauntered toward the door. In confusion, Jennifer watched them leave. They didn’t stop at the cash register and Hedda didn’t stop them. Instead, Hedda simply cleaned up their dishes and put them in the kitchen.

At that moment Buzz returned, holding the front door open for the girls.

“Hedda, they didn’t pay. And they sure didn’t leave a tip.”

“It was only a couple of Cokes,” she said. “I can cover it. Don’t say anything.”

“Why not? If Buzz knew what they were up to, they wouldn’t be allowed in here. He has that sign. We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”

“Oh, that would make school so much nicer for me,” she said.

“I see,” she said. She was seeing far more than she liked.

Jennifer touched Hedda’s cheek. “You know, you don’t have to be that tough. It’s okay to get a little help sometimes.”

“It’s okay.”

“How long have you been here, Hedda? In Boulder City?”

“Six months,” she said, turning the page of a magazine. “But we just came from Henderson. We’ve been around here a long time. Lots of waitress jobs in the casinos, where the tips are good. We’ve been on our own about a year. Since my mom’s last boyfriend moved on.”

“Gosh, I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too. I’m pretty sure it was my fault.”

She reached for Hedda’s hand, grabbing it. “Hedda, it
can’t
be your fault.”

“No biggie,” she said, pulling her hand away. “There’s more where he came from.”

A familiar hurt crept into Jennifer’s breast and she wanted to promise never to leave Hedda. But she couldn’t promise anything.

“I want to say something to you,” Jennifer said. Hedda looked up from her magazine. “I know you have a lot to put up with—and that some parts of your life aren’t easy. You work hard, you have a lot of responsibility and, like me, you’re not rolling in dough. A lot of people would let that make them mean-spirited and sulky, but you see the bright side of everything. You let the tough stuff just roll off while you get on with your life. And you have the absolute best personality.”

“Yeah?” she said, smiling somewhat shyly.

“Yeah. And I’m just damn proud of you for that. You’re the bomb.”

Eight

A
lex worked in the detached garage with the door up. He had put new tires on a secondhand bike, polished it up a little, replaced the seat and put some reflector tape on the rear bumper. It was a shiny red mountain bike and looked damn good even if it did have some miles on it.

It was that time of day—early afternoon. She finally came walking past after her shift at the diner. “Hey,” he called.

“Hey,” she returned. “New bike?”

“Sort of.” He wondered if she had any idea how much she had changed. She’d been in town just over six weeks, in the house next door for just a couple, but her transformation was amazing. The first time he’d seen that shocking bald head and pale face he’d figured she was sickly or homeless or addicted to something or other. But Buzz usually just fed high-risk transients, he didn’t employ them. And Buzz had good instincts. Over the weeks not only had her hair grown out, giving her a very sexy cap of thick, dark hair, but all that dog-walking and hiking and heavy food at the diner had rendered her tanned, freckled and filled out in just the right places. Her face was no longer so thin, her eyes no longer had that appearance of being sunken under a browless forehead. Rosy cheeks glowed under sparkling brown eyes under shapely dark brows. Those eyes would not sparkle unless she was happy.

The picture on the flyers showed a model-quality blonde. The girl in his driveway was a wholesome-looking country girl. From artificial and flawless to natural and squeezable. She had that scrubbed look of a pure beauty—literally, the girl next door. Of course, it didn’t hurt that she’d finally, very recently, traded in the men’s baggy fatigue pants for some stylish khakis that fit. Fit that cute, round little bum.

“Come and take a look,” he invited.

“Was there something wrong with your bike?”

“Yeah. I was bucking someone home and the whole frame got bent up.”

“Oh, Alex! Oh, God, did I do that?” She stepped aside to grab the handlebars on his blue mountain bike, examining it closely. “If I hurt anything, I could…” She twisted it left and right, rolled it back and forth, frowning in confusion. Then finally she looked at him and saw his grin.

“Gotcha.”

“You have a mean streak, don’t you?”

“I stopped by the bike shop and the guy had a really good deal on this secondhand number. Doesn’t look too bad, does it?”

“No. Doesn’t really look secondhand.”

“Go put on some shorts. Let’s take ’em out for a spin.”

She looked so surprised. Hadn’t she known he got the bike for her? “Are you kidding?”

“’Course not. I mean, Doris—I wouldn’t call you overweight, but I don’t want to spend all summer with you on the handlebars.” He shrugged. “Even if the view isn’t half bad…”

“Oh, my God, Alex,” she said, bending over to roll up her pant legs.

“You’d be better off in shorts,” he said. And he thought, I’d be better off if you wore shorts, that’s for sure.

“I don’t have shorts,” she said.

“How can you not have shorts?”

“Not everyone is as well decked out as you, Alex.” She grabbed the bike right out of his hands and mounted it. “I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve ridden a bike. Too long, that’s for sure.” She applied foot to pedal, went down the drive with a “Whooo-hooo” and yelled, “Can we go see the bighorns?”