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CHAPTER ONE

Charisma yanked the door of the old truck open, wishing for something, anything, resembling a breeze. The inside of the cab was hot, hotter even than the reading on the old thermometer hanging outside her kitchen window – the one that read impossibly high numbers even though it could never quite escape the shade of the gutter.

She fumbled for the ignition with her key, taking short breaths of stagnant air. The engine finally rumbled to life, after two unsuccessful attempts to start, and hot air rushed out of the vents. Charisma sighed; even the slightest reprieve from the oppressive, heavy, heat was an improvement.

And this, she thought, is what happens when you move halfway across the country to the middle of nowhere Arizona in the hopes of escaping the mess you’ve made of your life. She shook her head and tried not to think about how her own foolishness was responsible for her current, miserable, position.

The mess she had in mind sank further and further into the distance as she drove toward town. Town, of course, was miles away, through endless fields of nothing and livestock. The weekly journey for groceries and some semblance of human contact was becoming more traumatic than the actual separation from civilization.

The truck lumbered along, always threatening to give out, to stutter to a stop, but never making good on the promise. She heaved another sigh. It was just a matter of time before she would have to find some way to bring home a new car. She ran her hand lovingly over the dash. After all, this was the same truck she’d driven in all the way from New Jersey. The same truck that had brought her to this Godforsaken little town and left her utterly unhappy.

She pursed her lips. Of course, it was the same truck she’d learned to drive in, and it wasn’t entirely the truck’s fault that she had decided on Arizona in the first place. If she were being entirely truthful, which she didn’t feel like being, she would place the blame fully on herself. Maybe her next car could have some kind of air conditioning. Maybe she could find something that didn’t guzzle gas. The thoughts made her smile; maybe, after all, a new car wouldn’t be so bad.

The grocery store was little more than a store front, an overly bright apple painted next to the name Ross’. There were no cars parked out front. In fact, there were hardly any cars on the street at all. The door to the store yawned open, hoping to catch even the slightest breeze. Charisma opened the door of the truck, faced with nothing more than the same still heat, and hurried into the grocery store. As if not having air conditioning in her truck weren’t bad enough, it seemed like no one in Carlton believed in artificially cooling their buildings. Not for the first time, Charisma found herself wishing that they did.

Bill Ross sat in his usual spot behind the counter, an antiquated counting machine in front of him. When it was time to check out, Charisma knew Bill would painstakingly enter each product name and the price. The entire process made Charisma want to start ordering groceries online, in bulk. Of course, the chances of Carlton being a deliverable area were slim to none. Charisma was banking on none.

“Hey, Bill,” Charisma greeted as she snagged one of the three rusty baskets that always sat near the door, the ones that never really fit into one another and stuck when she tried to pull them apart. She had never been in the store where all three has been in use. She suspected that maybe, at one time there had been more, but couldn’t figure out why anyone would have taken a metal basket from the local grocery store home with them. She also suspected that they might have originated from another store. Or several. But the longer she thought about the faded logos imprinted on the baskets, the less sense it made, so she finally tried to stop thinking about it in general.

The newspaper Bill was fanning himself with stopped in mid-sweep. “’Lo there, Charisma.”

She smiled at the way he said her name, as if there were no vowel until the final ‘a,’ and the sound hung unfinished in the air, waiting for something more to follow. Sometimes Bill would go on to talk about the weather, which never seemed to change, or share some tidy little bit of gossip about some person she’d never even met. Today he was silent, and went back to basking in the breeze from the desk fan that was pointed directly at his face, blowing what little strands of grey hair he had left out of order, until they stood up in disarray.

Charisma moved through the cramped aisles, the shelves jammed full of odds and ends. Sometimes she would have to search behind the canned green beans to find a can of black beans, but after a few months in Carlton, Bill’s sense of organization began to make a bizarre kind of sense. Charisma wondered if this was an indication that she had spent too long in the town; a sign that she should move on. The only thing holding her back was that she had no idea where she would go next, and she certainly didn’t have the idealism she’d had a year ago when she’d first left New Jersey.

A loaf of bread, a head of lettuce, a bag of Granny Smiths that had seen better days, a sack of potatoes, a container full of rice. One item after another made its way into the basket. What she wouldn’t give for a decent restaurant. Any restaurant, really.

Bill observed her collection of groceries and his eyebrows arched downward in disapproval. “Who taught you how to eat anyway?”

Charisma shrugged, but threw a smile in his direction. She didn’t really have an answer.

He started to type in the numbers, his arthritic fingers swollen and misshapen, falling hard on the large keys with heavy clicks. “You hear Jared’s back in town after all this time?” he asked as he laid the sack of potatoes gently in a paper bag.

“No, I hadn’t,” Charisma said, as if she knew who Jared was and what had prompted his leaving Carlton. Though, she really didn’t have to wonder too seriously about the latter.

Bill clicked his tongue, like one of the old women who sat in their rockers with their lemonades, impervious to the heat as they worked with their knitting, old cats or dogs lounging at their feet. It was as if they had seen too many movies and were more than willing to succumb to the stereotypes. Charisma looked out the window at her battered old truck. Who was she kidding? These days she was practically a walking stereotype herself.

“He just showed up one day,” he continued, “as if nothing had ever happened at all, you know?”

His words melded into each other, a heavy melody that was pleasant to listen to – sometimes hard to understand, but always pleasant to listen to. Charisma searched for an appropriate response and came up only with, “Really?”

“Oh, yes.” Bill let out a low whistle. “And you know,” Bill gave Charisma a knowing look, his shaggy brows raised above his wrinkle-creased eyes, “all the ladies who remember him from back before he left, they’re all talking about it. I hear them all the time when they come in here, talking about how he hasn’t even changed. They’re all plotting on how they’re going to get him to stay this time. I say they’re wasting their time. Weren’t anything here before that kept him from packing one night and being gone the next morning, and there isn’t anything new to keep him here. There’s you, but you aren’t even really here ever anyway.”

“Well, you know, it’s a long drive, and I really don’t eat that much. There’s just me.” Charisma stumbled over the words, feeling ridiculous even as she said them.

“Well, I can tell you don’t eat much. I already told you.” He continued to add up her groceries, after each click placing the item inside the paper bag, checking every now and then to make sure the bag wouldn’t be too heavy for her to carry by herself. For all the town’s faults, Bill Ross wasn’t one of them.

“I’m busy, you know, working, too. Today’s my day off.”

Bill nodded. “Right, I know. Sure would like it if you could make me a little art for my store. That apple out there’s been around for years. I keep painting it, but for some reason it just keeps looking worse and worse.”

Charisma cocked her head. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. It would get her out of the house at least. And there were only so many hours she could spend in front of a drawing table or computer, poring over children’s books and animals’ skeletal structures. “I’ll see what I can do, Bill. What did you have in mind?”

Bill grappled to cover his surprise, and Charisma felt momentarily guilty about all the times she had told him she wouldn’t repaint the store’s sign. Like it would hurt her to take a few hours out of her day and save the town from having to look at that awful apple. “I don’t know. Maybe something classy. Something classy that has to do with food. Anything, really, just not an apple.”

“Sounds easy enough, Bill. Tell you what, I’ll order the supplies I need and I’ll let you know when they come in.”

Bill smiled a full smile, showing all his dentures, and nodded. “That sounds just fine, Charisma. You know where I’ll be, and I’ll expect to see you, same time, next week.”

Charisma laughed and reached for the two paper bags he pushed toward her. “Sounds good. Have a nice week, Bill.” She stacked the paper bags side by side in the cab and backed out into the road. Still no sign of a breeze. The roads were empty. No one walked along the sidewalk, or moved in and out of the stores that were scattered along Main Street. Nothing seemed to be happening at all.

Charisma tried to think of some other reason to stay in town, but there wasn’t one. She could visit the little boutiques, but they were far from trendy, and most of them consisted of loose cotton dresses and oversized straw hats. Instead, she started back home, both relieved and disappointed that her journey outside of the house was over.

She was thinking about what she could paint over the apple when she saw a hulking shape sprawled out in the road in front of her. Charisma slowed down, squinted. She couldn’t figure out what it was, but she moved over to pass it.

And as she did, she saw it was a dog. A big, shaggy, black dog stretched out in the middle of the road, its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth.

Charisma pulled over with a screeching stop, the tires kicking up dirt and pebbles. She hurried out into the street, so fast she almost fell headfirst onto the pavement.

“Hey there, umm, dog,” she said tentatively as she squatted by its head. It didn’t open its eyes, but its chest rose and fell with what seemed like shallow little breaths. “What are you doing in the middle of the road?”

She was trying to figure out how she would get the dog into the truck when someone walked up next to her.

“You hit that thing?”

The voice startled her out of her plan to half-drag, half-carry the beast to her truck, and she nearly fell backward. A car was parked on the other side of the road, the engine still running.

“No; I, I didn’t, of course not,” she couldn’t help the edge of indignation that crept into her voice. “I didn’t hear you pull up.” She also found she couldn’t stop the accusatory note that laced those words. She clamped her mouth shut; maybe being quiet would be her best option.

Charisma looked up at the man. Even from her position, squatting over the motionless dog, the sun blinding her, she could tell he was good looking. In fact, the most attractive man she’d seen since she’d packed her truck to the brim and drove out of New Jersey. Not that that was saying much anyway. He squatted down next to her and reached out to touch the dog.

“What if it bites you?” she asked, her eyes wide and dark.

He looked over at her, his mouth quirking into a grin. “Don’t really look like he’s in any position to be biting anyone any time soon. Besides, what were you going to do? Sit here and stare at it all day.”

Charisma blushed. “No, of course not.”

“Well, then.” He ran his hand over the dog, pulling back its lips to reveal a mouthful of sharp teeth.

BOOK: Misplaced Innocence

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