The heaviness settled again like a cloak. How in the world was she going to run an office, even one in the middle of nowhere, when she couldn’t even keep the job she’d had? Peter had seen it, cut his losses. Jumped ship. If she was being brutally honest, she had, too. Weren’t the pills proof of that?
She managed two strips of bacon and a forkful of eggs, slid the rest in the trash beneath the coffee grounds. Even the thought of food made her queasy right now. Sleep, when it finally came, had been restless and sporadic, filled with dreams she couldn’t remember and a deep pool of dread in her belly when she woke.
The coffee cup felt slick in her palms, and she forced herself to breathe.
You’re not the first person to start a new job in a new city, Rebecca. Not the first person to rebound after life’s tanked beneath you.
But it just felt too soon. She wanted to run back upstairs, bury her head in the feather pillows.
Instead, she gulped down the rest of the coffee and headed to her room. Extra concealer hid the dark circles, and she slid on a pair of black trousers, a lavender silk blouse. Not too dressy for Dahlia. A coat of lip gloss and some blush, then she faced the mirror, gave her best nice-to-meet-you-this-will-be-fun smile.
You’ve got this. Except … she didn’t.
The dread sank ever deeper.
At the newspaper office, she slid out of the car, surveyed the squat wooden building set back from the road, baskets of pink and yellow petunias flanking the entry. The sign out front looked like it’d been scrubbed down with sandpaper, and the last “a” in Dahliawas so worn it looked like an “o.” Dahlio? For a moment, an unbidden image of the elegant glass-and-steel high-rise, her daily backdrop in New York, filled her mind. No.
She bit her lip, stepped inside. The brown fake-wood paneling had to be straight out of the seventies—sixties, even—and the place smelled like mildewed paper, dry-erase markers, and someone’s gardenia perfume.
The staff wasn’t impressive either. The reporter, Tiff, looked sixteen and sounded eleven, with a breathy voice and stilettos so high Rebecca took mental bets whether she’d fall flat on her face standing up to shake hands. The ad representative, Dinah, had a spray-on tan and cracked her gum when she talked. Millie, the secretary, pursed her lips so tight Rebecca would have sworn she’d just eaten a sour pickle.
“Pleased to meet you,” Millie said in a thick Southern accent, sounding anything but pleased.
Rebecca’s throat tightened. “Likewise.”
She got out of there as fast as she reasonably could, mentally berating herself as she drove toward Granny’s and the solace of her guest room. What in the world did I get myself into? She surveyed the homes as she drove—pretty wooden houses, all of them at least sixty years old, a few renovated surprisingly well, nearly all with porch swings and rockers and wide expanses of lawn that boasted tree houses and gardens and tire swings, everything wholesome and sweet and classic Americana.
Everything she was not.
The early summer sun was high and bright as Rebecca navigated the busy Main Street, making a mental note to remember the coffee shop, Joe Mama’s, a surprisingly chic little place for Dahlia. It was nestled between a frumpy boutique and the hardware store her Granny and Gramps used to own before he died.
As she drove, she peered down a side street, caught a glimpseof water. The Wahca River, where she used to spend hours fishing, first with Gramps and later with her pal JJ, a freckle-faced, chubby, pimply kid who’d taught her to net the fish without killing them and hung out, mostly content to let her talk at him while they baited hooks and cast lines. Fishing. She didn’t think she’d done that in twenty-something years.
She glanced down at her sleek trousers, her leather briefcase in the passenger seat next to her—both entirely wrong for Dahlia, she knew it—and felt light years away from the girl she’d been in those summers. She didn’t even have the same hair color anymore, all blond and streaky now, thanks to her colorist. Had that summertime girl ever really existed? Sometimes she felt like she was living in a dream, like she was completely separate from her body, swimming an inch above her skin. Treading water. Holding her breath. Like she wasn’t even real.
A wave of longing for her old life back in the Big Apple struck her like a gut-punch. Sarah and Marisol, the bustle of the streets, the galleries, the restaurants, the pace of the city, everything. Now here she was in Dahlia, South Carolina, about as far away from New York as she could possibly get. While Granny and Dr. Carter thought that was a good thing, Rebecca had some serious doubts.
Forget doubts. This was a mistake. A Class A, one-hundred-percent mistake.
She gripped the steering wheel, heart thrumming as she stared at a man in overalls in the car next to her, a woman on the corner in a bright yellow “Jesus Is My Co-Pilot” T-shirt.
What on earth am I doing here?
CHAPTER 4
Devon
After school got out, Devon hurried to the corner store to help Mr. Allen awhile before heading up to the church. Mr. Allen usually gave him a dollar or two and whatever leftover muffins he had from the morning, the ones that wouldn’t be good enough to sell the next day. Today, Mr. Allen tucked an extra juice box in the plastic grocery bag, his knotted-up hands shaking a little as he tied the bag up tight.
“For the sweeping.” He patted Devon roughly on the shoulder, leaned hard on the cane. “You’re a good boy. Your mama would be proud.”
Mama had worked for Mr. Allen since she was a young woman. Had even met Devon’s daddy there, too, though A.J. Robinson wasn’t much cut out for life in rural South Carolina. Mama’d said the lure of the city was too much for any woman to keep his daddy pinned down. Who knew where he was now. No matter, she’d always told Devon. She said Devon’s love was more than enough for any woman, worth more than three good men put together. Devon believed her. Mama had a way of making him feel like a million bucks and then some.
Devon took the shortcut to the church, cut through some alleyways to avoid Marquis and his gang. He didn’t need to, but it was better that way. Easier to avoid temptation than confront it head-on.
Sweat pooled at his lower back as he walked, beading his upper lip, soaking his brow. At the corner, his knees felt weak as he scanned the street—all clear—then let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. No sign of Marquis.
He sucked at the juice box, the sugar making the heat seem not so bad. His dark shirt didn’t show much sweat, thankfully, and by the time he got to the top of the hill and past the row of rundown houses and the one barber shop, he was ready for a break. “The Reverend Mack Bryant, Pastor” the sign out front proclaimed, along with “Dahlia Community Bible Church” and the ten o’clock Sunday worship time.
