deduced. “You’re mad because you didn’t get the store manager promotion here. But come on! You don’t have to go all the way to Montana.”
The teenage trio had migrated from the clearance jeans to the wall racks where jewelry and other accessories were artfully displayed. Addie shifted slightly so she could keep a better eye on them, and deftly flipped a perfectly folded neon-pink tee on the top of the neat pile. The stacks of shirts were all brightly colored, replacing the Easter-egg pastel ones that had been out the week before.
“I’m not leaving because I’m mad,” she told Daphne. She’d put her name in for manager of the store when their present manager had been promoted to a district position, but she hadn’t really expected to get it when there were others with more seniority already waiting in line. “And I’m going all the way to Montana because I want to. I’ve been thinking about this for nearly a year. I wanted a change and this is it.”
Daphne propped one hand on her trim hip and held the steamer wand out with the other, sending wispy tendrils of vapor out into the air. “But why?” She was twenty-one. Five years younger than Addie and still in college. Working at Honeyque was only a part-time job for her until she finished and moved on to bigger and better things.
Addie had been just the same, once.
Only “bigger and better” never came along. Or, more to the point, Addie was afraid that it might have come, and she had somehow missed noticing.
She was reasonably intelligent. She wasn’t going to win any beauty contests, but she didn’t think she was exactly doggy kibble, either. All in all, she was pretty average and yet, of all her friends, she was the last remaining singleton. No marriage. No near misses. No nibbles on the line, period, despite the dates. She’d come to believe that she hadn’t found her future in her hometown of Cincinnati, because her future wasn’t in Cincinnati.
Maybe, like her favorite blogger, her future was in Rust Creek Falls, Montana.
“I’m moving because I need a change,” she told Daphne again, hiding a sigh because she’d just seen two of the teenage shoppers slip several chains from the display into their pockets. “Call security,” she instructed her coworker.
“Call the men in the little white coats,” Daphne countered, “because you’re the one who’s gone out of her mind.”
“Maybe I’m heeding the call to my destiny!”
“Just hope it’s not like a moth’s destiny,” Daphne muttered, setting down her steamer wand to pick up the phone. “They can’t keep from incinerating themselves by flying into the light.”
Addie tossed up her hands in frustration. She’d had too many similar reactions from her own family. “Say what you want. Rust Creek Falls is waiting for me. And I am not going to disappoint her!”
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