“Five years ago, I –“ Her voice caught in her throat. She cleared it. Began again.
“Five years ago, I was convicted of being an accessory to a robbery.” She trained her eyes on her knees. Didn’t dare to look up for fear of the betrayal and loathing she was sure were in her friends eyes. They had trusted her and she was a criminal. An ex-con.
As the silence stretched, she willed herself to get up and leave. To make things as easy as possible for everyone. Before she could summon up the strength to rise, Jesse moved to sit next to her. He reached over and pried her hands from between her knees. His hands felt warm in her icy ones.
“Tell us all of it.” He said in a quiet voice. “I don’t believe for a minute that you’re some kind of murderer or hardened criminal.”
That gave her the courage to glance up. To meet Piper’s gaze. Tears shimmered in her friends eyes. “I’m so sorry you felt you could never tell me about this.”
She lowered her eyes, the weight of relief rushing through her almost too much to bear. She wouldn’t be abandoned or cast out.
In a stronger voice, she began again. “I was so young and stupid. I fell in love with a ‘bad boy’. I thought he was the coolest thing in the world even though everyone told me at the time he was trouble.”
She brushed a stray tear from her cheek and Jesse squeezed her hand gently.
“Well. They were right. He and a friend of his robbed a jewelry store and I was the getaway driver.”
“I’ll never believe you did that willingly. He must have forced you somehow.” Piper interjected.
“He tricked me.” Harley Ann said. “I was so incredibly stupid I thought he was in there picking out an engagement ring for me. And that his buddy, Calvin, who went in with him, was going to be best man.”
Piper gasped and put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, no.”
Harley Ann risked a glance around. Piper’s eyes were big and full of sorrow. Ian sat beside his wife with a grim look on his face. She hesitated, and then turned to Jesse at her side. Would his protective shield be gone now?
He gave her a look of such deep understand that she nearly lost her grip on her emotions.
Looking back down at her lap, she went on. “Both of them rushed out of the store and jumped into the car yelling Drive! Drive! And, I did. I was so confused that I just did what they said.”
She stopped and took a deep breath. “A couple of miles down the road, when I slowed down, they both jumped out and ran. So, when the police pulled up behind me, there was nothing for me to do but surrender. They didn’t believe me when I told them I hadn’t known about the robbery. That they were going to do that. The police took me straight to jail, fingerprinted me and put me in a cell.”
“Didn’t your parents come and bail you out?” Piper questioned in a soft voice.
“They’re dead.” Harley Ann answered. “They died in a car accident when I was sixteen. So I dropped out of school, got a job and started paying my own way.”
She took a deep breath. “The trial was a nightmare. No one believed I didn’t know David and Calvin were going to rob the jewelry store. No one believed I could be so naïve as to think he would leave me waiting in the car and go pick out an engagement ring for me. In retrospect, I can see why. I was an idiot.”
Jesse squeezed her hands gently.
“I don’t want to go into details about the trial. But, I will tell you I was sentenced to three years in a women’s prison. When I got out, I came here to live with Aunt Edna. She offered when my parents died but I refused. I didn’t want to live with an old lady.” She laughed. “Someone should have come and taken my by the scruff of the neck and made me come here. But there was no one to do it.”
“What about your boyfriend?” Ian asked. “What happened to him? And to his buddy.”
Harley Ann shrugged. “David went to prison. David Green is his name. And Calvin.” She shrugged again. “I have no idea. He somehow managed to elude the police and disappear.”
“Could David Green be out of prison now?” Jesse inquired.
“I don’t know what his sentence was. My trial was first and once it was over, I never wanted to hear David’s name again, so I don’t know how long he got. I guess he could be out now. Why?
Her eyes went big. “You think David has found me?”
“I’m wondering who sent you the flowers. What did the card say?”
Harley Ann blushed, embarrassed that she’d thought Jesse sent the flowers. “There was only one word. It was ‘unforgettable’.” She would grind those flowers up in the garbage disposal the minute she got back home.
“Wait.” Piper said. “You two think her ex-boyfriend is out of jail and has come here to – what?”
“Until just now, we didn’t know the details of her past, just that there was some mystery that no one in town knew.” Ian soothed his wife. “But wedidthink that because of the bug at the farmers market and the flowers Harley Ann thought Jesse sent to her, that someone had targeted her, and that it could be related to that mystery.”
