Love in a Small Town

Curtiss Ann Matlock

Chapter 1

You Don’t Even Know Who I Am

When Molly awoke, she knew right away that Tom­my Lee hadn’t come to bed all night. She knew, without opening her eyes, because she could feel the emptiness beside her. She had been married to Tom­my Lee Hayes for almost twenty-five years. She knew what the bed felt like with him in it or him not in it.

She stretched out her arm and felt with the flat of her hand the cool smoothness of the sheet beside her. Testing at first, seeking a sign of lingering heat, and then simply rubbing her palm across the taut sheet and wishing.

Molly was a quiet sleeper, didn’t hardly mess up a bed at all, whereas Tommy Lee always left the covers looking like he’d wrestled them all night. He couldn’t stand his feet to be cramped, so he tugged the sheet out at the bottom, and he shifted his body so hard that he got the fitted sheet all bunched up. Sometimes he got so rambunctious he would throw his pillow on the floor and then snatch Molly’s right out from beneath her head, and the whole time he never woke from a sound sleep.

Cracking an eye, Molly peered at the red numerals of the digital clock. It read 6:47.

“Oh, Lord,” she mumbled and pulled the pillow over her head.

A moment later she came up from beneath the pillow, her hair a wild nest and her cotton gown hanging off her shoulder. She looked down at the pillow and saw streaks of black—the telltale evidence of a woman who has fallen into the poor habit of not removing her makeup before bed, and then cries off her mascara. She looked at the bedcovers, all neat at the bottom. And then she sat there, listening to the music floating up from the stereo down in the shop. The music was the tip-off that Tommy Lee was out there. He couldn’t do a lick of work without his music blasting.

Not even seven o’clock on a Saturday morning, and Tommy Lee was already working. Molly could count on both hands the number of times in their marriage that her husband had managed to sleep past five. A man with his own successful business kept long hours, and a man who had a passion for what he did kept them even more so.

Tommy Lee certainly had a passion, all right—for engines and cars. He was known for building and rebuilding racing engines, and he was so good at it that people came from Arkansas and Texas all the way to his small shop in Oklahoma, which sat right there on the other side of the driveway from their house and therefore allowed him to be over there any time day or night. One thing about it, Molly always knew where Tommy Lee was. She didn’t have to worry about him being out with another woman.

Sometimes Molly thought she would stand a better chance against another woman. She had never man­aged to compete well against six-hundred-plus horses harnessed in a hunk of metal.

Thinking about Tommy Lee already up and pro­ductive and herself sitting aimlessly on the bed and brooding made her feel guilty, so she dragged herself up and headed for the shower, by way of the double open windows. The first thing Molly always did each morning was to go look out the window.

Their house, which was the house Tommy Lee had grown up in, was one of those big old farmhouses. Eight years ago, when they had moved in, Molly had pretty near hated this house. It had been so stark, everything in it painted white and with white blinds at the windows. But then Molly had looked out their bedroom window and been totally captivated.

At the moment, the spring breeze fluttered her thin cotton gown and caressed her skin. May was at an end and June coming next week. Blue sky stretching forever, a hawk soaring high, the windowsill beneath her fingers covered with fine grit.

To the southwest she could see the town of Valen­tine: the tall trees, the co-op elevator, the Baptist church spire, the big old silver water tower. Valentine was where she’d grown up, where her mother and eldest sister lived, where she and Tommy Lee shopped and had Mexican food on Friday nights.

Directly south the land rolled away in grass and canyons and patches of trees. In the near pasture she saw her gelding, Marker, swishing his tail, and farther out she could see Mr. Gil’s registered longhorns grazing happily.

Tommy Lee had inherited two thousand acres at his daddy’s death, but he had quit trying to farm it five years ago and rented most of it out to Mr. Gil. Tommy Lee’d had to let his daddy be dead and buried nearly four years before he could bring himself to do it. There never was a thought of selling the land, though, and Molly was glad. Molly was a hoarder of land. Not that she really considered this land hers. She couldn’t somehow; she was of Collier blood, not Hayes. But she did think of it as Tommy Lee’s and their chil­dren’s land, and she hoarded it for them.

Turning from the view, Molly went on into the bathroom and into the shower, without glancing at the mirror as she passed. Lately she had felt a strange tightness across her chest whenever she happened to look into a mirror. It seemed like confusing questions leaped out at her from the glass and demanded answers. Molly not only had no answers, she didn’t understand the questions.

But a mirror is not an easy thing to avoid. After Molly had showered and dressed in a soft denim shirt and faded Wranglers and slipped on Keds, she went to brush her teeth and was confronted by the mirror that took up the entire wall above the cultured marble sink.

She stared at herself, and then, slowly, she leaned forward and studied her eyes. The circles beneath them were dark—like she had two black eyes.

Oh, Lord.

Molly swallowed. Lately she had been feeling as if she were holding a ball of tears down inside. Just then the ball was growing and swelling and trying to push its way out. It had done so several times in the past weeks, and each time the tears had come with such force they frightened her. Molly was about the ugliest crier on earth. Even Rennie said so.

Mostly no one had seen Molly’s eruptions of tears, but last Wednesday afternoon, when she had gone to the movies with her mother and her sister Kaye—which was a trying experience in itself, but it had been hers and Mama’s little birthday present to Kaye—she had started crying for the heroine, who’d had a fight with her lover, wrecked her car, and then lost her dog. The movie had had forty-five minutes still to go, and it was a romantic comedy, and Molly had known good and well everything would turn around for a happy ending, but she’d just sat there and boo-hooed uncontrollably into the only tissue she could find, which was a used ragged one from the bottom of her purse.

Kaye had been embarrassed as all get-out. “Good Lord, you need to get some hormones or somethin’,” she said. Kaye could be like that, tactless as wallpaper falling down.

Undoubtedly Kaye would have much more to say if she knew the shocking fact that the F-word had crept into Molly’s thoughts. A couple of times the state­ment, “I don’t give a fucking damn,” came clearly across her mind.

Well, Molly had been brought up better than that. She had never used the F-word in her life; the idea appalled her. Aside from several times telling Kaye to “kiss my ass” in a fit of fury, the strongest curses Molly used were “sugar" or “spit” or "dang."

Then, on top of that, the past Thursday she had been barreling by Eulalee Harris’s place, and Eulalee’s chickens had been all over the dusty, rutted road, like they always were, and Molly had not tried to swerve at all. What she thought was, “Get out of my way, you f—— chickens.”

Not that she could hurt chickens. It was nearly impossible to run over a chicken on purpose. But that was not the point. The point was that she hadn’t cared one whit if she mowed them down.

Her image in the mirror started in with those silent, demanding questions again, and the best answer Molly could come up with was that if Tommy Lee would quit falling asleep down in his BarcaLounger in front of the television, she would do a lot better.

Then she straightened herself up, breathed deeply and blinked her burning eyes. She did not intend to do something as stupid as start the day out crying. Lord knew the circles beneath her eyes were bad enough.

She combed her hair up into a ponytail and dabbed on a bit of makeup from the Estée Lauder kit Rennie had given her last Christmas. Rennie would spend $120 like that, whereas Molly would have had to wait for half price—not that she couldn’t afford it, but she was darned near incapable of buying anything when not on sale price. She put on her favorite dangling pewter earrings and her silver-and-turquoise cuff bracelet and decided she felt a lot better, more in her skin where she belonged.

Downstairs in the living room she straightened the cotton throw that was all askew over Tommy Lee’s BarcaLounger and picked up his dirty socks thrown right there beside it, just like it was his bed, and an empty Coca-Cola can from the end table and took the things on into the kitchen. Socks on the washer, Coke can in the recycling bin. She paused at the sink; the window above it was opened and Tommy Lee’s music came loudly through it.

Tommy Lee liked all sorts of music, but his favorite was country, just like Molly’s. He said within the country sound were mixed the seeds of all other music, from classical to blues to rock. Tommy Lee’s mind clicked with details like that. He could tell the artist and the song title of every country song recorded from the early fifties until today, and in the same manner he could glance at any car and tell the make and model and year it was produced, going all the way back to the first assembly line models. He liked his cars fast and his music loud, and Molly was of the opinion that both had pretty much ruined his hearing, which was why he kept the stereo volume up. He also shut people out with the sound of his music and his engines; he’d told her this once.

Through the window she could see across to the shop, could see Tommy Lee in his dark shirt and jeans beneath the fluorescent lights. She watched him a moment and then closed the window and turned on the little black radio on the counter. The sultry country voice of Patty Loveless came out the speaker, and Molly sang along while she made a fresh pot of coffee.

The coffeemaker gave up that final steamy gurgle, and Molly got two mugs out of the cabinet, filled them—sugar for her, black for Tommy Lee—and carried them out the back door and across to the shop. Tommy Lee was working on an engine perched on a stand, working it over with his strong, greasy hands and his biceps veined and bulging and stretch­ing his T-shirt sleeves.

In all truth, Tommy Lee had not changed in looks a whole lot since he was sixteen years old, except to fill out, cut his velvety mahogany hair shorter and have it come in silver on the sides and have crow’s-feet grow out from the corner of his summer blue eyes.

Molly thought he was a lot more handsome these days than when they first had married. He was every inch a man and no doubt about it. He was in her opinion the most attractive man in Valentine, despite his never having kept up with fashion. He still favored T-shirts with hot rods emblazoned across the front and Levi’s that rode low on his lean hips. Women looked at him in those Levi’s, too. Molly had seen that, and she couldn’t blame them. Tommy Lee wasn’t a man to look back, though, at least not so anyone would tell. Tommy Lee was quite proper about things like that. And he was shy. He would blush deep red at the least thing.

He didn’t hear her step or hello, because of the music drowning everything out. Juggling the two cups, Molly went over to turn down the volume. Tommy Lee saw her then.

“Well, good mornin’,” he said. “Sleep well?” He was frowning in deep concentration at the engine before he even finished speaking.

She said, “I brought you a cup of coffee,” and he didn’t notice that she didn’t answer his question.

He said thanks. “You can just set it there." He motioned to the tall red toolbox.

She set his cup where he said and stood there, sipping from her own, watching his hands and fore­arms.

Molly had always liked to watch Tommy Lee work on anything. There were few things in this world that Tommy Lee couldn’t build or repair, and she had always been amazed at how he could be so strong and gentle at the same time. She kept on staring, watching his strong, grease-stained hands feel all in and around the smooth cylinders. Memories and feelings tugged at her. A desperate longing and a crazy anger all swirled around inside her. The anger embarrassed and scared her.

Quite suddenly Tommy Lee went to wiping his hands on a rag, reached for his cup and looked directly at her.

“It’s an awfully nice mornin’,” he said.

He cast her a grin, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He looked hesitant. That look made Molly mad and sad at the same time, and she got that tight feeling in her chest.

She said, “Did you sleep okay in your chair?”

Tommy Lee looked down at his cup. “I’m gonna have to quit that, I guess. It’s makin’ me real stiff.” He drank deeply from his mug, then looked back at the engine. “I meant to come up, but I got to watchin’ that racing movie with Paul Newman, and the next thing I just fell asleep.” He looked sorry, and that made Molly feel worse.

She thought how he’d rather be down there watch­ing a movie than up with her, but she didn’t think it would improve anything at all to say it. She didn’t think she could say it, because then it would be thrown out there like the bald truth and they’d both have to face it.

She said, “Would you like to sit on the porch for a few minutes? There’s a couple of cinnamon rolls left. I’ll pop them in the microwave.”

She watched his face, watched his gaze dart back down into his coffee cup. Hiding there.

With a shake of his head, he said, “I’m already greasy. I might as well finish here first. I’m a week behind on this engine for Cormac.”

Hurt sliced through Molly, so strong it brought an actual pain across her shoulders and a knot beneath her breastbone. She felt rather like she was shriveling and at any moment she would be no more than a tiny dried lump on the floor, where she could be swept up with the bits of greasy dirt and engine carbon and thrown away with all the other stuff Tommy Lee had no use for.

Tommy Lee said, “I’ll be up for lunch,” but that didn’t make her feel a lot better. She told herself to quit being an overly sensitive child and that she, too, had a lot of things to do. Saturday was housecleaning day, and she was always behind on the business accounts.

Turning, she looked around for dirty dishes to take back to the house. Tommy Lee, and Woody Wilson, his part-time helper, were forever bringing their drinks and snacks out and leaving their dishes. She found three empty ice tea glasses, a plate of crumbs, and a fat glass half filled with milk. The milk was still cool, obviously left from that morning.

Molly went to the door and called, “Kitty, kitty.” The fat gray tabby, Ace, came at a quick waddle. The dog, Jake, rose from beneath the workbench and came over, too. He appeared more stiff than usual. He had been shot two years ago by Mr. Gil for chasing Mr. Gil’s longhorns, and the shot had creased his backbone. After the vet bill, Tommy Lee said Jake was the most expensive free stray dog they’d ever had. At least Jake couldn’t chase cattle any longer.

Molly tipped the glass first for the cat and then let Jake have a couple of licks.

“Geez, Molly, do you have to do that?”

“What?” She looked up to see Tommy Lee frown­ing. She’d forgotten that Tommy Lee never liked for her to feed the animals out of the house dishes. Usually she made certain he didn’t see. She said now, “I’ve fed them from the house dishes for years.”

“I know that, Molly,” he said, his blue eyes sharp. “But plates are one thing and a glass is another. We put our mouths on the glasses.”

“I do wash them, Tommy Lee, same as the plates. I put them in the dishwasher and that sterilizes them."

By now Ace had quit sticking his head in the glass and had gone to wetting his paw in the bit of milk and licking it. Jake had lain back down.

“It’s still not a sanitary practice. I just don’t like the thought, okay?” Tommy Lee said, as if his word was to be obeyed.

Molly lifted the glass and straightened, and she said, “When you eat at a restaurant, you put the fork all the way into your mouth—a fork that you know not in whose mouth it has been or even if it has been properly cleaned. I should think if you’re willing to do that, you’d have very little problem with drinking out of a glass you can be certain has been through the dishwasher after an animal has licked it.”

Tommy Lee shook his head and looked down at the part he was wiping with a rag.

Molly clamped her mouth shut and took the dishes and went back to the house. As she opened the porch screen door, she heard the music start up again, with a blast, as if to smack her back into the house. Like an invisible door slammed against her.

In retaliation, she marched over and turned up the volume of the little radio on the kitchen counter. Then she stared at all the dirty dishes, in the sink and out of it, and heard her mother-in-law’s voice: “I’ve always believed that a woman should get her kitchen straight before bed.”

That was a good idea that Molly had let slide a number of years ago, when she started keeping the books for Tommy Lee’s shop and then somehow had found herself with her own full-fledged business. She simply had never been able to keep the house as orderly as her mother-in-law had, as orderly as Tommy Lee would like.

With resignation she began rinsing the dishes in the sink and putting them into the dishwasher. A dark line on one of the plates caught her eye, and she paused, gazing at it. The plate was one of the set her mother had bought for them up at the old TG&Y store in Oklahoma City when she and Tommy Lee had gotten married. The plates were cream colored, with a black-and-yellow line and a single spray of yellow daisies around the rim of each plate and cup. There were only three of them left, and the dark line on this one was where it had been broken and glued back together. Staring at that line, Molly counted back the years and thought maybe she should send a letter of testimony to the makers of Super Glue.

She thought, too, how the plate was a reflection of her marriage.

The next instant, she lifted that plate and smacked it on the divider of the white enamel sink.

Sounded like a ball going through a window. Molly scrunched her eyes as tiny pieces of china peppered her face and flew into the air and out across the counter and down on the floor. The bigger pieces clattered into the sink.

Molly was shocked. She stared at the shards.

Goodness! What had she done?

Mortification crept in. It simply wasn’t done breaking an innocent plate, no matter that it had a glue line. It certainly wasn’t done by Molly Jean Hayes, mother of three grown children, certified pub­lic accountant, and upstanding member of both the chamber of commerce and Methodist church. The action was destructive, wasteful . . . and possibly a little deranged.

But by golly the reckless act felt so darn good that she did it twice more with the two yellow daisy plates remaining in the sink. Lifted the plate and brought it down, felt the impact and the disintegration, and heard all the shattering, then did it again.

There. She supposed she could break a few dishes in her lifetime if she wanted to.

Breathing as hard as if she’d run a mile, Molly stared at the broken china. Tears filled her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Turning, she went to the pantry, brought back a broom and dust pan and began to clean the slivers off the floor. She cried silently, feeling totally lost and confused and alone.

Tommy Lee came in as Molly got to cleaning the bigger pieces out of the sink. She heard the familiar thump of his Wolverines cross the back porch and enter the laundry room behind the kitchen. Quickly she sniffed back her tears and tried to gulp down her shaky sobs.

She knew before he said a word that he was going to ask her where something was, and sure enough, he said, “Molly, have you seen my box knife?”

“In by your chair.”

She heard him go through to the living room and then come back again and stop on the far side of the breakfast bar. She felt him looking at her, but she didn’t look at him. She didn’t want him to see her face. Very carefully, she kept picking the big pieces out of the sink and putting them into the plastic trash basket.

“What happened?” Tommy Lee asked.

She thought for a moment, then said, “I broke some plates.”

Quite possibly she should have offered him some explanation, but she refused to do so. A piece of the china bit into her finger. She pressed harder against it.

“Is it because of what I said about lettin’ the cat eat out of the glass? Are you mad about that?”

Molly said, “I’m not mad about that. You have a right not to like the animals eating out of your dishes if you want . . . even if it is a stupid opinion.”

She didn’t look at him, but she could feel him looking at her, could feel his anger hitting like darts. And then he had to go and ask a really dumb question.

“What’s the matter with you?”

It was the tone of his voice, not the question that sent smoke coming out Molly’s ears. Tommy Lee could ask the silliest questions. So many times, when Molly got up in the night to go to the bathroom, he asked, “Where you goin’?”

For the first ten years or so, Molly had actually answered, “To the bathroom,” and then one time she finally said, “Dancing.” He still asked sometimes, and she went to saying things like “To the dentist” or “To the movies."

Then there were the times when she would be lying in bed, under the covers, with the pillow over her head, and he would come over and lean down close, lift up the pillow, and say, “Are you asleep?”

Lord, men could be so stupid. Molly had a private theory that the reason many women like her stayed married was that they were convinced their man needed them—like Tammy Wynette sang in “Stand by Your Man.”

Molly at last lifted her eyes to meet his. His eyes were cool as a winter sky and slapped her the same as if he’d reached out with his hand.

She said, “We haven’t made love in over three months, and you’re askin’ me what’s wrong?” She threw a shard of china into the trash. “I guess you askin’ that question pretty much shows just how wrong things are.”

He did that rolling his eyes thing, and Molly wanted to smack his face. Then he said acidly, “So you’re gonna break all our dishes? Is that gonna explain things to me?”

Tommy Lee always managed to make her feel stupid. Well, what she thought right then was You can take your f—— ridicule and stuff it.

She pulled up straight and tall and said quietly, “It made me feel better. And I guess I can break half the dishes in this cabinet if I want. Half of them are mine."

Pure shock crossed his face, and the next instant his pale blue eyes shot fire, and he came flying around the breakfast bar, saying, “By God . . ."

Molly stepped backward and bumped against the counter, automatically putting her hands up in front of her. Tommy Lee had never laid a hand on her—he never physically fought with anyone—but he sure looked like he was going to kill her at that moment.

Then he stopped and pain crossed his features, pain so strong it went right across and sliced Molly’s heart.

“I don’t want us to fight, Molly.” He looked away, and his shoulders slumped.

It made her ache to reach out to him, but she just stood there, feeling like her arms had turned to wood, and he stood far away from her. It was as if she were speeding back from him, watching him as she got farther and farther away.

Half turning, hardly aware of what she was doing, she reached for the blue checked dishtowel. “I don’t, either,” she said, her voice a raspy whisper. She felt like she couldn’t breathe and that loneliness was swallowing her whole.

“Tommy Lee, I’m not happy with the way things are between us, and I can’t go on pretending every­thing’s just hunky-dory when it isn’t. Not for me, anyway."

He just stared at the countertop.

“Are they for you?” she asked, prodding him, wanting him to say something for her to take hold of. She was willing to settle for him saying just about anything at all.

He shook his head. “No,” he said tightly, which was a whole lot less than anything at all. Then he rubbed the back of his neck and looked tired of living.

Molly said, “We just don’t have anything in com­mon anymore, Tommy Lee. We don’t even know each other anymore."

But Tommy Lee said nothing to that, either, just kept on looking tired.

So damn tired, as if life with her was just one big trial.

That’s when she said it, tossing down the blue checked cloth and stating, “I think I’ll go live at Aunt Hestie’s for a while.”

At that his head swiveled up, and he stared at her, his blue eyes going wide. Her pronouncement had struck him, and she would have had to admit that she was glad to see it.

Then he said, real tight, “If that’s what you want,” and his blue eyes got small and shot fire.

What I want? Molly thought, every muscle rigid. He wanted to see it that way, to put it on her like that. Fine! There was just nothing she could say to that. And as if she knew what she was doing, she walked swiftly to the stairway and up the stairs.

From the big closet, she dragged out the tapestry luggage—the set she had bought for the planned trip to Mexico City last year after they’d gotten Colter, their last, settled in college, a trip that they had never taken because Tommy Lee had bought that ‘65 Cor­vette instead, for which they’d had to drive to Califor­nia and spend four days with a car club there. Tommy Lee had always wanted a classic Corvette, and Molly hadn’t wanted to begrudge him his precious dream. But she guessed she still did.

She jerked clothes from the closet and pulled them from dresser drawers and stuffed the bags. Suddenly she sat down on the bed, her legs gone weak.

Yanking a tissue from the box, she blew her nose. She tried to pray, asking God to help her get control of her anger. God. . . oh Lord, help me. . . .

Her attention veered away because she was listen­ing for Tommy Lee’s footsteps. She listened so hard that she heard the trees rustle outside the window and the drip of the toilet.

Oh, God, what am I doin’? I don’t know, but I do know I just can’t go on livin’ like this anymore. It hurts too bad.

When she heard the back door slam, she jumped up and ran across to the window. There was Tommy Lee down below, sauntering over to his shop. Sauntering in that way he had of resting down in his lean hips, all those hard muscles moving along in his hell-with-you stride, swinging a can of Coca-Cola in his hand.

Molly jerked back, dropped the blind and began singing loud and full, “You don’t even know who I am. . . ." Her tears stopped. Like turning off a faucet. By heaven, she didn’t need to stay where she wasn’t wanted.

Moving coolly, feeling her earrings sway, she pulled off her Keds and tugged on her boots. She gave her hair a few swipes with the brush and let it go, hanging straight back past her collar. In the bathroom, she scooped up her Estée Lauder kit and toiletries and dumped them into the cosmetic case. When it wouldn’t close, she left it halfway unzipped. The entire time she was singing, went from all verses of “You Don’t Even Know Who I Am” into “These Boots Were Made for Walkin’,” just that chorus, because she couldn’t recall the rest of it, and that was all that pertained to her heart at the moment.

Back in the bedroom, she snatched up pictures of Savannah, Boone, and Colter, grown now but her babies always, and tucked them in the big bag be­tween jeans. She turned the picture of her and Tommy Lee, taken five years ago at their twentieth anniversa­ry, downward with a hard bang. She grabbed up her daddy’s old Bible and her blue dumbbells and threw them into the overnight bag.

She stopped, looked at her wedding band. It was simple carved yellow gold, all they could afford when they were first married. Tommy Lee had talked of buying her a more expensive one, but she didn’t really care for diamonds or other jewels, and any ring other than the one Tommy Lee had put on her finger when they made their vows just wouldn’t be the same at all.

She tugged furiously at the band but couldn’t budge it over her knuckle. “Oh . . . dang!”

Giving up, she dragged the bags down the stairs, grabbed up her purse and briefcase, with her note­book computer, and in two trips hauled it all out to her El Camino and threw it into the truck bed. She went back inside, got the pet carrier, caught Ace, and put him in it.

She set Ace in beside the bags, slipped behind the wheel, jabbed on her sunglasses, and backed, weaving from side to side, down the drive to where her two-horse trailer sat. She had never before hooked it up alone, but she managed to get the job done. Just went to show that she could. One more thing she didn’t need Tommy Lee for.

Still moving like an oil pumper going at full speed, she got Marker from the pasture and loaded him up, and threw a bucket of grain in beside Ace. Then, breathing hard and with sweat trickling between her breasts, Molly headed back up the drive.

Tommy Lee, with the Coca-Cola in his hand, stood leaning in the big open doorway of his shop, watching her come. She stopped the El Camino and lowered the window. He sauntered forward. Molly’s heart was beating so hard, it was about to come out of her chest.

Tommy Lee said, “If anyone calls, you want me to give them Odessa’s phone number?” Cold and hard as frozen steel.

Molly said, “Yes.”

For an instant something shone in his eyes, some­thing mean as she’d ever seen. Then he just stared at her, and it was as if a thick plate of glass had come down between them.

Molly shifted into gear and drove away, a lot more slowly than she wished because she had to think of Marker back there in the horse trailer—and because she was listening hard for Tommy Lee to stop her.

But he didn’t.

And then she was sobbing and driving along. The chickens were clucking around in the road when she passed Eulalee Harris’s place, but they had plenty of time to get out of the way, and Molly absolutely refused to think the F-word. Her life was falling to pieces, and she had to grasp control somewhere.