I shut up about that like I always did.
When she was walking to the bonnet dryer she’d set up herself in her kitchen after it all happened, I asked, “While you’re cooking, you want a polish change?”
Her eyes came to me and lit. “You bring your polish, darlin’?”
I smiled at her. “Don’t I always?”
She smiled back. “You sure do. And I’d love to get some of that pearly peach you had last spring. I know we’re headin’ into fall, but I’m not a fall. I’m a spring. Had my colors all done up professional-like when ladies were seein’ to that kind of thing. But I figure, spring color in fall, that’ll still be like havin’ pearly pumpkins on my fingernails.”
“Sounds perfect,” I told her, heading to my case to pull out another compartment.
I changed her polish. I set her hair. And I gave her a hug before I left, when she always stuffed a twenty in whatever pocket I had available to her, this on top of paying me and the tip she handed me, face to face.
Lou had a family to look after so she couldn’t swing an evening home appointment. Her old stylist was young and had a life after work so she’d declined doing it. Which left Mrs. Whitney with Francine hauling herself from Yucca, and charging her double to make up the gas money.
I’d said yes the first time Lou asked me.
Mrs. Whitney didn’t get much company and went out even less.
But that didn’t mean she didn’t want her hair looking nice.
She appreciated me taking the time to come to her place, which meant I got home late after a very long day.
Appreciated it enough to want to give me an extra twenty dollars.
I never said a word about it.
It wasn’t necessary.
She needed to do it.
So I let her do it.
After that, I drove home, and as I drove home, I called Andy.
The staff got him on the phone for me and I listened to him chatter away while I drove, and then while I made myself a spinach salad with diced hard-boiled eggs, sliced red onion, dried cranberry, slivered almonds and some sprinkles of cheese.
He had to go so I let him go before I ate it.
I cleaned up after myself and made some tea.
Then I walked out to my porch and sat in my wicker chair.
There was a bit of a nip in the air sharing summer was saying its farewells. Soon, when I sat on my porch, I’d have to wear a sweater like I had to last fall.
But right then, I didn’t need one.
I just sat cross-legged in my chair and picked up the book I’d left out there.
I balanced it, closed, on my lap and lifted my tea to my lips and my eyes to the street.
And I let the peace and quiet of Glossop sink into me.
It had been quite a day and a long one to boot.
But the thing I liked most about living there was, no matter I’d met a man who I knew, in another life or with the right timing, might be able to wring miracles and balance my world, a world that had always been unsteady, at the same time making me happy. No matter his ex-wife was undoubtedly going to shake things up in a number of unpleasant ways for the foreseeable future. No matter what my mother would dream up to torture me to get what she wanted out of me.
No matter what anything.
I always had that spot right there on my porch in Glossop to remind me I’d made it to the exact right place I needed to be.
I might never have had any hopes and dreams.
But with the life I’d led, I’d always craved just what I was right then experiencing.
Calm. Peace. Simplicity.
For me.
And for Andy.
So I could take the bad and take the good.
And end every day’s rollercoaster having everything I needed.
Serenity.
In other words . . .
Glossop.
Speeding Tickets
Hixon
SATURDAY NIGHT, HIX sat on his couch, his eyes on the TV that was playing a late night movie, the volume set low since his girls were asleep in the back.
His mind was not on the movie.
Like it had been awhile, it was on the shitty mess of things that had consumed his life.
Shaw was out on a date that night with Wendy.
That was two dates that week.
So Hix was also up waiting for his son to get home by a curfew he knew Shaw wouldn’t push. His boy never did.
His curfew on Saturdays was midnight.
He had ten minutes.
As he waited, didn’t watch the movie and thought about the shit of his life, Hix held on to the fact that the week hadn’t started out great, but it had surprisingly settled in.
He hadn’t heard again from Hope. He also hadn’t seen Greta (which meant he hadn’t had to fight the temptation of her). He further hadn’t had to lay it out for anybody else.
And no one had said boo to him about anything.
Except for Pastor Keller walking right up to him while Hix was eating lunch with Donna at the Harlequin.
The good pastor did this to state, “Hope to see you and Greta in a pew real soon, Sheriff. Greta can forget her duty to God on occasion, which for her is understandable. But I haven’t seen you there in some time, son. Although God frowns on one of His children not understanding the concept of the sanctity of marriage, He has His way of seeing right comes from wrong. So bring your new woman to the Holy Father’s house so He can see what He’s wrought in all its glory.”
Keller hadn’t given Hix the opportunity to say a word. He’d said what he felt needed to be said and walked away.
When he did, Hix hadn’t been ticked at what he’d said or that the man had the damned nerve to walk right up to him and say it.
All he was thinking was wondering what was understandable to a deeply religious man like Pastor Keller (and in Hix’s opinion he was even more deeply religious than his occupation had call for him being) to make him think Greta could miss church on a Sunday.
This was not his to know, so he forced himself to let that go and just be happy that nothing else reared up about Greta.
Including the news that he’d hooked up with her clearly hadn’t filtered down to the kids.
They’d had an evening where they went to see a couple of houses that none of them liked, but that was the only shift in the norm.
So that was all good.
But the rest was not.
It was shit.
And it didn’t just fill his mind and take his focus off a late-night movie.
It had been filling his mind all week.
Hell, all year.
And obviously all this shit had to do with Hope.
But right then it was centering on the fact that, since before she’d asked him to leave, when he’d pressed to get to the bottom of her issue that was making her so unhappy, she’d just clam up, give him a look full of hurt and say, “You know, Hix.”
He didn’t know.
He had no clue.
He just knew he’d asked repeatedly, demanded, threatened, then even got down to begging for her to let him in on it.
She hadn’t done that.
All he got was more, “You know, Hix. You know.”
And now he wasn’t only pissed at how she was behaving, he was pissed she’d never had the courtesy and respect for the life they’d built together to give him a straight answer about why she’d torn it apart.