Page 1

CHAPTER ONE

There was no sign.

That dark-blue welcome sign that used to stand big and tall on the side of the road welcoming all travelers to Bridell, Indiana was no longer standing. All her life that sign had been there. But a powerful windstorm knocked it over a few weeks ago and nobody bothered to put it back up.

As she drove past that knocked-down sign, she had no clue why that bothered her. She never felt welcomed the whole time she lived there, anyway, and no sign was going to change that. But the fact that there was no sign; that there was not going to be even the pretense that she was entering a welcoming place, felt like salt in her already blistering wound. As if it was a sign in and of itself of what was to come.

But she kept driving. She couldn’t turn back now. She kept moving forward until she was pulling into the slanted parking lot of Maylene’s restaurant where many travelers passing through always stopped by.

But she just sat there. With her head leaned back against the headrest, and her small hands still gripping the powerful steering wheel, the tension in her body felt like a volcano ready to erupt. And it had nothing to do with a knocked-down welcome sign. It had everything to do with William.

With William!

It had only been three months since she stood in front of William Skeffington the Fifth and proudly said I Do. Three short months. She thought, after her wedding, that she would only return to Bridell to occasionally check on Gramps. That was the plan. Now she was back already. The second time in a month. Only this time around it wasn’t about Gramps. This time around it was because she had nowhere else to go. This time around it was because her marriage was over. A marriage she was certain would last a lifetime had only lasted three months.

She almost let him get away with it.

She almost refused to believe her lying eyes.

She allowed him to pull her into his arms as if it would all blow over. As if it was no big deal. But it would never blow over as far as Joy was concerned. And no big deal? It was a major-ass deal to her because she had standards she lived by all her life and she wasn’t allowing anyone, not even William, to force her into forsaking who she was and everything she stood for just because she loved him. And oh how she loved him! But after what he did to her how in the world could he love her?

She stopped. She had to stop herself from re-living all of that drama again. What was done was done. And it was done!

She wiped her tears away for what seemed like the hundredth time, checked her makeup in the overhead mirror, and then put on a pair of dark shades to hide her eyes that would easily confirm to anyone that she’d been crying during the entire drive from Chicago. Then she grabbed her phone and her keys and got out of her car.

Wearing Prada head-to-toe, she stepped out of her Lexus looking like a sista who had her shit together, but feeling like whatever she had together was bullshit. She looked around at that small town with an ache in her heart.

She was born and raised in Bridell, and worked for years right there at Maylene’s. After she left town, she thought she’d never step foot in that restaurant again. It reminded her too vividly of all the struggling she endured just to make ends meet. It reminded her too painfully of all those dreams deferred that she sometimes doubted would ever come true.

Not that everybody viewed it the way she did. Maylene’s was considered the place to be in Bridell because of its location. Just off from the highway, it was a busy spot for locals and travelers alike. But all of those travelers that came and went got their gas next door, got their food from Maylene’s, and kept it moving. They never stayed. But nearly everybody born and raised in Bridell never left.

Joynetta Johnson-Skeffington was among the very few that got away.

And now she was back too.

But as she entered the restaurant where she used to be a server just a year ago, the same restaurant where she first met William, it was a heartbreaking return. And to make her return sting even more, the first face she saw was the very face she didn’t feel like dealing with in that moment.

But Helen, a middle-aged white woman with always a joke for the travelers and gossip for the locals, was the hostess. She was usually up front at the welcome podium, but wherever she was, in the front or in the back, she was always up in somebody’s business.

As soon as she saw Joynetta, she was ready to get up into hers. “Netta, that you? That you girl?” When it was obvious that it was indeed the young lady they all knew as Joynetta Johnson, she laughed. “I couldn’t tell it was you at first with them sunglasses on. What on God’s green earth are you doing back here already?”

Joy tried to match her cheerfulness, but failed. “Hey Miss Helen, how you doing?”

“How I’m doing? How you doing? That’s what I wanna know!”

Although Helen was a married lady, everybody in Bridell referred to even married women as Miss. Not as a diss, but as a sign of respect. And Helen, like almost everybody that worked at Maylene’s, deserved respect because she’d worked there since she was a teenager. It wasn’t by design. It was the way it was in Bridell. She, like so many before or since, ended up working a job her whole adult life that was never going to take her anywhere but where she was. They all got stuck in a job they were tired of, and in a town they didn’t even like, while Joy, of all people, got out. Some resented that. Miss Helen never did. In Joy’s view, she was a good person when she wasn’t busy gossiping.

But she was almost always busy gossiping.

“I don’t get it,” she said to Joy. “Wasn’t you in town just four weeks ago? I heard you got into it with the police something fierce and had to be hauled off to jail. And you back for more?”

Another thing about Helen: She always brought the tea, but she always told it wrong. “I came to town after Gramps fell and hit his head,” Joy corrected her. “I wasn’t here to get into it with no cops. I was here to check on Gramps.”

But Helen had already moved on. “Where’s that rich hubby of yours?” She was looking past Joy. “He outside?”

Joy wasn’t about to go there with her nosy butt or anybody else at that restaurant. “Is Gramps here?” she asked her instead.

Helen smiled. “Don’t wanna talk about it, eh? I understand. My marriage is in a perpetual state of I don’t wanna talk about it melodrama too, girl. I know how you feel. But this, too, will pass.”