There’s still no one else around in the parking area when I reach my SUV. I dig out a suit from my garment bag and change right there, using my reflection in the window to tie my tie.
Now I look like an attorney.
When I think about how cheap it’d be to lease an office in Maudlin Falls, the voice scolding me not to be ridiculous sounds mostly like my mother’s, with a little bit of Dad thrown in for extra guilt.
We didn’t pay all that money to send you to college and law school for you to waste your life in that little nowhere town.
Well, he must not love you very much if he won’t move to be with you.
Why would he want to staytherein that little hick town when he could make so much more money with his degree working for someone else in Miami or New York?
Who in their right mindwouldn’twant to be with you, son? You’ll find a nice guy who recognizes what a catch you are. It’s his loss.
What will our friends say if you do nothing with your life?
Hating all those irritating snippets, I angrily shove them aside. In the beginning, I tried to cling to those words as a lifeline of sorts, to lie to myself that I’d made the right decision.
It took me less than a year to realize how wrong I was. Every time he left me after a visit made me want to chase him and beg him to let me come home.
Still, I resisted, thinking I could wear him down.
Over the past three years since I’ve left Maudlin Falls, I’ve nuked five potential relationships, two of which never made it past the one-week mark. The latest lasted two months and ended three weeks ago, even though he insists it’s not over and keeps trying to get me to change my mind.
That’ll teach me to never date someone I work with.
Once I’m back in my SUV and have the engine running, I leave the radio off and slowly make my way across the parking area and toward the dirt road. Except…
Something’s wrong.
I pull over, leave it idling and get out to walk around my SUV.
The right rear tire is low, nearly flat.
You havegotto be kidding me!
This is bad by bad-luck standards, even for me.
I turn my Range Rover around, return to a shaded, level section of grass in the parking area, change back into my jeans, and set to work changing my tire. If I call AAA, I know who will respond—Kurt Peyton, from the Maudlin Falls Garage. It’s the only garage close by, and it’s all the way in town.
Problem is, he knows me. He’s changed enough of my tires, unlocked my car doors, and jump-started enough vehicles for me over the years that there’s no way he wouldn’t remember me. Plus, he’d have to see my AAA card and ID even if he didn’t remember me. And Desiderio Keiser isn’t exactly a name that rolls off the tongue, or is easily forgotten.
Meaning word of my return would spread like wildfire before he even returned to town.
Besides, I can change it myself just as quickly as I can waiting for Kurt, by the time he drives all the way out here. At least it’s not too hot today, and I don’t have anyone to witness one more incident in my bad-luck string of them.
It takes me about thirty minutes to change the tire. Then I go wash my hands in the falls and change back into my suit to resume my journey.
I’ve missed this little town. Maudlin Falls is a caricature, an anachronism, but a pleasant one.
A soul-level palette cleanser.
A place where I felt at peace for the first time in my life. I felt loved and wanted and welcomed and embraced not just by my guy, but by the community at large. Before I lived here, I thought it was too good to be true, or full of sappy small-town hicks I would soon convince my guy didn’t have his best interests at heart. Probably closet bigots, all of them.
I was wrong on all counts.
It’s no surprise that the love of my life grew up here. Which makes it even more confoundedly stupid that I walked away in the first place. I had a decent job working with a law firm in Webley, as well as taking on my own cases in Maudlin Falls and surrounding areas.
I reach the main road and continue my drive into town. The place time forgot, in many ways. Where the drive-in still shows double features every Friday and Saturday nights and hosts a weekly flea market on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Yes, maybe I have been stalking the localMaudlin Falls Gazettevia their website.
