nine, and her father was surely behind the pharmacy counter now.
It was at once a relief and a disappointment. Being alone with her own thoughts was a bad place for her these days. Too much pain, too much despair, too much anger and no answers in sight.
She reheated some of the coffee that was left in the pot on the stove and sat at the ancient table, cradling the mug, annoyed that her dad hadn’t even remembered that she liked half-and-half.
But that was him. Fred Loftis, penny-pincher extraordinaire. From the way they had always lived, no one would guess he was as successful as any businessman in town. Hand-me-down clothes for Nora, all of them chosen from church rummage sales where he’d allowed the purchase of only the ugliest of them. How much fun it had been to always be the girl in school who looked like a ragamuffin from the Great Depression—or an old lady oddly cased in a young girl’s body.
A twisted young girl’s body. The years of wearing that damn hideous brace for scoliosis hadn’t helped, nor had it helped that when she’d needed eyeglasses he’d always insisted on the cheapest frames. Not one bit of fashion in her life. He’d carped about the cost of them, too, and about the cost of the scoliosis brace and the doctors, but he hadn’t been able to get out of that without gaining the disapproval of the town.
If there was one thing her dad really cared about it, it was his public reputation. He was a God-fearing, righteous nineteenth-century man, whose frequent discourses on sin and vanity in the small church where he was a deacon had managed to convince everyone in town that dressing his wife and daughter in modest, ugly clothes had made sense—given his beliefs.
But that was the thing about small towns. They made room for every kind of eccentric short of the criminal. Their kids, however, were far less tolerant.
Nora squeezed her eyes shut. She had enough to deal with in the here and now, she didn’t need to be wandering to the distant past. Of course, being with her father wasn’t helping that part one bit. She wondered if she had enough left in her savings to find a small place to rent.
But then the fear clamped her so hard she could barely breathe. After that man had attacked her, after his hideous whispered threats on the phone, she couldn’t stand being alone. Even here, in this house that echoed with the past and seemed so far removed from the life she had been building in Minneapolis.
They’d put one of those electronic bracelets on him after the threatening calls. He could only leave his yard to go to work. That should keep him confined, shouldn’t it? Although even her own lawyer couldn’t explain why they hadn’t just jailed him pending trial. Not to her satisfaction, at any rate.
But she was a thousand or more miles away right now, and if he strayed so much as a hundred feet the cops would be all over him. So said that lawyer. But after his threats, it was hard to believe. The guy was crazy. Clearly. He’d had no good reason to attack her in the first place. How could she believe he wouldn’t do something crazy again?
She realized her fingers ached from gripping the coffee mug, and as she crashed back into the present she had to face the fact that her day was empty. Empty hours scared her because they gave her too much time to think.
But how could it possibly have been any better locked up in her old apartment in Minneapolis with that man in the same town?
No, that would have been worse. She needed to find a job, that’s what she needed. If only she felt stronger, and looked stronger. Right now she doubted anyone would want to hire the scarecrow she had become.
Even though her appetite had never come back, she forced herself to look in the refrigerator for something to eat. She was supposed to eat six times a day. Small meals, but six a day until she started to feel hungry again.
Nothing looked good. Nothing. She finally grabbed a package of cinnamon rolls, her father’s one weakness, and cut one roll in half, leaving the other half in the package. If she could get this down, she’d be doing good.
Then maybe she would have the energy to take a walk, something else she was supposed to do every day to recover her strength. Hemmed in by orders, all for her own good, she had to force herself to obey them. She’d have preferred to find a dark corner and curl up.
Except... Well, that wouldn’t be good, either. In a dark corner she’d be even more alone with her thoughts and memories.
Trapped. As surely as a lab rat in a cage, she felt trapped, and she didn’t know how to break out.
She felt a weak sense of triumph when she swallowed the last of the roll. Thank goodness the coffee washed it down or it might have stuck. Going to her bedroom, she found some jeans, a flannel shirt and her walking shoes. She had just pulled her jacket off the peg by the door when the phone rang.
She hesitated. She knew who it had to be. But with a sigh, she answered it.
“Get down here, girl. I could use someone on the register for a few hours.”
Wasn’t that just like her father. Get down there and get to work, just as he had demanded of her in high school. And somehow those words released a surprising and unexpected burst of resistance.
“No. I have to go for my walk. The doctor said.”
Then she hung up and experienced a sense of satisfaction, something she hadn’t felt in a long time.
The phone rang again, but she ignored it. She slipped her jacket on, grabbed the spare key and left the house.
Winter tinged the air. Although there was no snow, nor any sign of it, she could almost smell it coming. Some aroma in the air had changed, something she had never been able to pinpoint, but she could always tell. Conard County was slipping quickly into winter.
And then what? she wondered dismally. Living with her father was apt to drive her even more nuts than it had before after so many years of ordering her own life. He wouldn’t allow her that independence. He’d feel that since he was supporting her she owed it to him to follow his rules in every respect, from how she dressed to working for him and doing chores for him. He wouldn’t give her an ounce of independence. He never had.
He’d claim she owed everything to him. One of the biggest and most momentous decisions of her life had been to go to college on her own. Paying every penny for it herself. Building a life as far away from here as she could get.
Getting contact lenses. Learning to wear more attractive clothing. Finding confidence first through her school achievements and then through her job performance. Then one sicko had come along for reasons known only to him and had stripped all of it away, including her job. Because notoriety had made the school system ask her to quit, with the excuse that parents had questions about her.
Well, why wouldn’t they have when the police had had so many? She wasn’t sure who had wounded her more, her attacker or the damn cops and their doubts.
Or the school administration that had refused to stand by her after her years of excellent work for them. They had promised her a stellar recommendation.
Although she could understand the school, she thought as she walked slowly down the hill toward the more level part of town. Parents were talking, afraid of what their children might hear. The guy might be crazy enough to come after her again. What if he came after her at the school? And besides, she was honestly in no condition to counsel anyone. She couldn’t even counsel herself right now.
In fact, she was
