His raspy voice hits her ears when she’s nearly off the porch. “You think there’s anywhere you can go that I won’t find you?”
Grace pauses, gritting her teeth. The threats are always severe. This is nothing new, and she knows from experience that there may be nothing out there for her. She knows Bellamy can—will—blacklist her name throughout the entire state of Texas if she leaves. But that fear of the outside—of slammed doors and hunger pains and concrete benches doubling as beds—isn’t scarier than the hard, inescapable truth that waits for her if she relents. Because if she stays, she’ll die here. Whether by his hand or her own.
“I’ll always find you, Grace,” Bellamy promises loudly. “You can bet on that.” He laughs again, throaty and thick. “I’ll find you, and then I’ll tell the whole world what you did.”
Even with every fiber in her body telling her to stop, to turn around and apologize lest he make good on his promise, Grace doesn’t give in.
She keeps walking.
Chapter 2
Three Months Later
The bell above the door of Murphy’s General Store dings as Shaky Rick Gentry plods in. Standing behind the counter with a lukewarm cup of coffee and a years-old issue ofPeoplemagazine, Grace doesn’t even have to look up to know it’s Shaky. The shuffling of his shoes against the tile floor and the alcohol-soaked air that permanently clings to him is enough for her to know it’s almost five in the afternoon, and he’s here for his daily re-up of malt liquor. Grace goes back to idly flipping pages full of celebrity horoscopes and trendy summer shoes.
The bell dings again a few seconds later, and this time, Grace looks up to see a woman on her cell phone, walking quickly toward the back of the store. It’s hard to say who it is, but by the neat, slim-fitting clothes and the shiny brown hair, she doesn’t appear to be a local. No one in Minetta dresses like that. In fact, no one who lives within ten miles of Treesaw County dresses like that. Maybe she’s from McBrayer or passing through fromAustin or San Antonio. She’ll forget about this place as soon as she crosses over the train tracks on Main Street.
Grace takes a long pull of her coffee, now verging on cold, and turns back to her magazine. She’s in the middle of looking at a picture of Ben Affleck hauling a trash bag into a dumpster when she hears the telltale shuffle of Shaky’s shoes.
“Hey, Grace,” he says in a soft voice. In his hands are two bottles of Olde English 800 that he slowly sets atop the counter.
Grace smiles as she rings him up. “How you doin’, Shaky?”
“Still breathin’, somehow.” He shrugs as he digs into the pockets of his ill-fitting jeans. “Keep tryin’ to die, but God don’t agree with that plan, I guess.” He pulls out a couple of crumpled dollar bills and some linty nickels and dimes but then seems to reach the bottom of the well.
The little monitor above the register shows the total is $10.06, about seven dollars more than Shaky has to offer. Their eyes meet, and Grace’s heart squeezes. “Murphy said if the till is short again, he’s gonna start docking my pay and put in cameras. I wish I could help you, I really do—”
“Please, Grace,” Shaky pleads, gripping the counter with his bony fingers. “I can’t…I can’t sleep. I just want to sleep, but my head, my body, it…” He seems to be barely holding himself upright, like the counter is the only thing anchoring him.
Grace sighs, looking out into the store, then back to him, to the way his brows have pulled together and his eyes have started to shine with tears. “If it were up to me, you know I’d give ’em to you, no questions asked. But I need this job.”
Shaky’s head falls forward, and she hears him sniffle. It breaks her heart; if she had the extra cash to float him, or if shecould count on Murphy not counting the till down to the last penny, she’d make it happen. But as it is, they’re both coming up short.
A crisp, brand-new fifty-dollar bill slides into Grace’s view, pushed by delicate fingers bearing silver and turquoise rings. The shiny red polish atop the long, perfectly manicured nails gleams under the overhead lighting. The scent of beer and stale sweat wafting off of Shaky swirls with an unfamiliar, luxurious blend of deep vanilla, crisp tobacco, and mint. Grace glances up and is met with a pair of brown eyes and a smile that crinkles them at the corners. “Allow me,” the woman says, nudging her head in Shaky’s direction.
Shaky turns to her in disbelief. “That’s awful kind of you, ma’am. Are you sure?”
The woman nods and places a manicured hand on Shaky’s shoulder. “It wasn’t too long ago that I was desperate for a good night’s sleep, too.” There’s something behind the look in her eyes—a knowing, an understanding shared between the two of them in mere seconds. “I hope you find it. And if you can’t, there’s a place in McBrayer that can help. For free. All you’ll need is the bus fare to get there.”
“Thank you,” Shaky says, nodding. “Thank you very much.”
Grace, watching the entire interaction in a sort of awe, only spurs into movement when the woman looks back to her, her eyes drifting to the bottles on the counter.
“Sorry,” Grace blurts out, then reaches quickly for the brown bags beneath the register. She hands the bottles to Shaky once they’re wrapped up, and he leaves her alone with the glamorous, mysterious benefactor.
Now that she has a moment to actually assess, she sees twolarge bottles of water tucked under one of the woman’s arms, and a bag of sunflower seeds bigger than Grace’s head in the other. The woman has an enigmatic, all-knowing kind of smirk on her lips as she sets the items on the counter. “Grace, right?”
Grace nods as she starts to ring everything up. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll take a pack of Virginia Slims and a Lucky 7s scratch-off, too, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Of course.” Spinning around, Grace grabs the pack of cigarettes and then pulls on the spool of Lucky 7s and rips off a ticket. It seems odd—considering the obvious wealth this woman has—for her to be buying cheap scratch-offs, but Grace doesn’t comment on it. She sets the ticket on the counter, then rings up the cigarettes and hands those over, too.
“Those look like they were painful,” the woman says, and Grace looks up to see her staring at Grace’s upturned palm where the pack of cigarettes sits. Beneath the cellophane-wrapped box is the collection of scars she tries—and fails, evidently—not to put on display.
“Yes, ma’am” is all Grace says, before promptly going back to her task of bagging up the water bottles and sunflower seeds.
A beat of quiet passes while she takes the fifty-dollar bill and counts the change, but as she reaches to hand over the coins and cash, she notices the woman is staring right at her. She reaches for the change, softly gripping Grace’s hand as she does. With a little smile folded into ruby-red lips, she asks, “You used to be a horse trainer over at Braxton Ranch. Is that right?”
