“Okay, y’all can come out now,” I yelled. I was right proud of myself for the job I’d done, and I hummed the tune to “Hell on Heels” by Pistol Annies. I might not have been able to even hum on pitch, and I sure wasn’t looking for a sugar daddy like the lyrics said, but I felt like I could conquer anything—like I really was hell on heels at that moment.
I had barely returned the shovel to its rightful corner and reluctantly taken off the gloves when Scarlett and Rosie appeared. Rosie frowned at the gloves, and one side of her nose twitched. “Those things should have been tossed a long time ago. We had a big old rat in the kitchen before Matilda passed away. I set a trap and caught it.”
My skin had already begun to crawl before Scarlett said, “She used those gloves to pick the critter up and take him to the dumpster. You should wash your hands before you do anything else.”
I tossed the gloves in a nearby trash can fast and ran to the bathroom. I didn’t even wait for the water to get warm to stick my hands under the faucet. By the time I had soaped them up three times, the mirror above the sink had fogged over.
“Don’t judge a book by the cover—or a pair of gloves by what they handled the last time they were used,” I told my distorted reflection in the mirror.
Rosie looked up from the grill when I finally reached the kitchen. “I don’t even know why I turned on the grill and the oven. Habit, I guess,” she said with a sigh.
“We’ll be hungry in a couple of hours, and I’m already craving a pan of hot biscuits and some sausage gravy,” I told her.
“Breakfast for lunch?” she asked.
“How about brunch? I don’t think that toast is going to hold me until noon.”
Scarlett pushed through the swinging doors into the kitchen and plopped down into a chair. “I went ahead and set the chairs all up to be for business, but there’s no need to put money in the cash register. I’ll get started doing some deep cleaning in a few minutes.”
“You said you liked to clean. Why do you look so sad?” I asked.
“I got stranded in Dallas on the way here five years ago. Not snow, but black ice, and the buses had to sit still and wait for it to melt. There were so many people milling around in that place that ...” She hesitated, took a deep breath, and then went on, “Well, I was terrified. Everything I owned in a small suitcase. I was afraid to go to sleep and had only a few dollars left for food, so I bought a bag of chips and a chicken sandwich. I found a corner and sat with my back against the wall all night and part of the next day when they finally announced that the bus was ready to load. I just feel sorry for anyone who is in that position these days.”
“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 inGone 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 everyFriday 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.
