The Fixer Upper (14 page)

I
hadn’t lied when I told Jimmy Maynard about my plans for the evening. Still smarting from Alex’s phone call, I decided the best way to work out my worries was with a project.

I cleared all the furniture out of the kitchen, stacking the chairs on top of the table, which I’d dragged into the dining room.

For a moment, I stood looking down at the ugly green floor, trying to figure out where to start. The room reminded me of an enormous, scummy pond. The only way to empty it, I decided, was bucket by bucket, or in this case, square by square.

At my request, Bobby had left me a wooden fruit crate full of tools he’d gathered from Birdsong’s basement and toolshed. I dug out a measuring tape and measured the room. It was exactly fifteen by twenty. The tiles themselves were eight-inch squares. By my quick computations, there were 630 tiles begging to be demolished.

The old linoleum tiles were worn and brittle and came up relatively easily with the aid of the knife-edged pry bar Bobby had lent me. Each time I whacked the head of the pry bar with the mallet, the sensation filled me with malicious delight. By eight o’clock that night, I’d filled two heavy-duty plastic trash bags with the discarded tiles. I was elated when I dumped the last tile into the last bag. Piece of cake, I decided. At this rate, I might have the entire kitchen rehabbed within a week. And if Bobby could match my pace, I would have Birdsong spiffed up and sold in half the time Mitch and I had allotted. Soon, I thought, I would be seeing Guthrie in my rearview mirror. By April, I would be seeing the cherry blossoms in bloom around the tidal basin.

Cheered by this thought, I made quick work of dragging the bags of discarded tiles outside to the garbage cans. But when I came back inside,
it was to find Ella Kate standing in the middle of the kitchen, a look of fury on her face.

“What’s all this?” she demanded. “Look at the mess you’ve made here. What do you think you’re doing to my floor?”

Something in me snapped.

“It’s not your floor,” I said. “I’m sorry, Ella Kate, but that’s the truth. Norbert left the house to my father, and he has asked me to get it ready to be sold. That’s what I intend to do.”

“You Killebrews!” She bit the words out. “Think you know everything. Think you run the world.” She stomped out of the room, slamming behind her the door to the hallway.

I vowed once again to get to the bottom of Ella Kate’s feud with my father. Later. Right now, I had a floor to demolish.

I plugged in the heat gun and started to work. If the tiles had come up with relative ease, the stubborn black adhesive was a whole different ball game. I had to aim the heat gun inches from the mastic with my left hand, use the heat to soften it, and after precisely two minutes, quickly scrape up the goo with my right hand before it had time to harden again into a seemingly impregnable lump.

In an hour’s time, I had barely managed to scrape clean a two-foot square of floor. My wrists were aching, and I’d somehow burned a dimesize spot on my right thumb. Waves of depression and self-pity washed over me. I’d graduated from undergrad school second in my class, been editor of the law review in law school. I’d landed a prestigious job with the most influential lobbying firm in Washington, D.C. But now, from the looks of things, I might well spend the rest of my fleeting youth on my hands and knees on the floor of a decrepit old house in a one-horse town in Mudflap, Georgia.

I flopped down on my back and stared up at the ceiling. The sight of water stains and peeling plaster did little to dispel the cloud of gloom hovering over me.

Stop it! I told myself fiercely. It was just a kitchen floor. Just three hundred square feet. Before tonight, I’d never so much as hammered a nail in place. And now, in just a few short hours, I’d already pried up an entire roomful of linoleum.

Groaning, I rolled myself to my feet. I brewed a strong pot of coffee and went back to work.

After plugging in my iPod, I decided to attack the floor the same way I’d attacked a seemingly impossible workload in law school. I divided the task into manageable chunks. Found a way to do the job more efficiently.

At midnight, when I’d worked my way exactly halfway through the floor, I stood up, did some yoga stretches, and decided to take a short break. I’d gotten hot and sweaty from proximity to the heat gun. I opened the kitchen door, and after a brief hesitation, stepped outside onto the back porch.

Sinking down on the top step, I let the cool night air wash over me, breathing in deep lungsful of some sweet-smelling floral scent. Looking around I noticed for the first time that a thick green vine had wrapped its way around the porch posts, and the waxy, white, star-shaped flowers seemed to be the source of the perfume.

I wondered idly what the name of the flower was. In fact, I wondered what the names of most of the plants in the overgrown yard were. I plucked one of the flowers, sniffed, and tucked it into the pocket of my bib overalls. Maybe, I thought, Tee Berryhill could name the flower for me.

Or maybe it didn’t really matter. As I’d already made clear to Jimmy Maynard, my stay in Guthrie was business, not pleasure. And it was time I got back to business.

“Drunk! Eight o’clock in the morning, and she’s passed out dead drunk on the floor.”

Ella Kate’s voice dripped contempt. I lifted my head from my outstretched arms, rolled to my left, and looked up. She and Bobby Livesey stood looking down at me.

“Eight o’ clock!” I tried to roll over, but my muscles screamed a protest. I looked around the room. Sunlight made warm butter yellow splashes on the wooden floor around me.

Wood. My kitchen floor was now decidedly wood. I gingerly inched
my way up to a sitting position. The better to survey my night’s work.

“Dempsey!” Bobby said, giving me a hand and hauling me to my feet. “I don’t know how you did it, but you sure did hit this floor a lick last night.”

I yawned. “Sure did,” I said sleepily.

“Man!” he said admiringly. “I thought it was gonna look good, but I didn’t know it was gonna look this good.”

“Not bad, huh?” I asked.

The floor was far from perfect. In the light of day I could see numerous specks of mastic still clinging stubbornly to the wood. There were gouge marks in the wood, and singe marks too, where I’d gotten carried away with the chisel or the heat gun, but all in all, I was amazed by what I’d accomplished in one night.

“I liked the linoleum better,” Ella Kate said with a sniff. “Olivia picked that tile out herself. Sent all the way to Atlanta to get it. Everybody knows linoleum is what you put on a kitchen floor.”

Bobby and I exchanged knowing looks.

“I wasn’t able to get everything up,” I told Bobby. I held out my mangled fingertips. “As it was, I couldn’t get into the tight corners with that pry bar. I must have ruined three or four kitchen knives.”

“You done great,” Bobby said, walking all around the room.

“What’s next?” I asked eagerly.

“Drum sander,” Bobby said. “I can rent one over at the Home Depot tomorrow. I got a helper coming over this morning. We’re gonna pull up all that slate on the roof and try to get the new underlayment down before another hard rain. Maybe next week, when the roof’s done, I can get this floor knocked out.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head emphatically. “Not next week. I’m on a roll. I’ll drive over to Home Depot myself and rent the sander. You’ll have to show me how to use it, though.”

“Oh no, no, no,” Bobby said, laughing. “I know you think you’re tough. In fact, you’re mighty tough. But you don’t want to be messing around with a drum sander. You got to keep working it over the floor, nice and even. And it ain’t as easy as it looks. That thing is heavy as a horse, and it’s got a kick like a mule. I see where you started stripping
the wallpaper in the front room. That’d be a good thing for you to do. Get that wallpaper off. Or pick out the color you want the outside of the house painted. I like that shade of green Jimmy Maynard painted on the right side of the door. You just leave the drum sander to Bobby.”

I looked at him. Raised one eyebrow. He shook his head and held up his hands in a gesture of defeat.

“You’re a Dempsey, all right,” he said. “Hardheaded. All them Dempseys hardheaded. I don’t guess you’re any different. Come on, then. A drum sander won’t fit in the Catfish. We’ll take my truck.”

In fact, we rented a drum sander and a corner sander at the Home Depot in Macon.

We stopped at a hot-dog stand that Bobby knew about, the Nu-Way, which he said was famous for its dogs, split open, grilled, and served on griddled hamburger buns with a spicy chili sauce. The day had gotten warm, hot even, so we sat on the flipped-down tailgate of Bobby’s truck and had an impromptu picnic, washing the dogs down with icy Styrofoam cups of root beer. We ate in companionable silence, and when I’d eaten every bite of my hot dogs, I embarrassed myself with a tiny, unavoidable belch.

“Whoa!” I said, covering my mouth with a crumpled napkin. “Excuse me.”

“Can’t be helped,” Bobby said. “You ready to get back to work?”

“In a minute,” I said, leaning back on my elbows and turning my face up to the sun. It felt so good to be warm, and comfortable, with a belly full of food. Spring came much earlier to this part of Georgia, I decided. The dogwoods that lined the streets of Guthrie were already fully budded out, and waves of pink, white, and coral azaleas made bright splashes of color in nearly every yard I’d seen. This time of year in Washington, I’d still be wearing a winter coat.

I hopped off the tailgate, did a couple of deep yoga stretches, and gathered up the grease-spattered paper sacks from our food. “Now then,” I told Bobby. “Back to work.”

The drum sander was, as Bobby had informed me, bulky and tricky to maneuver. He fitted me out with a pair of plastic goggles and a dust mask, and when I got a look at my reflection in the kitchen window,
I looked like some kind of giant mutant science fiction insect.

“Just keep it moving evenly over the floor,” Bobby told me, shouting to be heard above the racket the sander made. “Don’t stay too long in one place either, or you’ll dig a hole in the floor. Nice, even, sweeping motions. That’s what you want with a drum sander.”

With Bobby’s help, I sealed off the kitchen from the rest of the house with thick plastic sheeting, and then went to work. I spent all day that day, and the next, working on the kitchen floor, becoming totally obsessed with achieving wood-floor perfection, working through three different grades of sandpaper.

At one point Saturday morning, Tee Berryhill dropped by. He took a step backward when I answered the doorbell.

“Lord have mercy, Dempsey,” he said. “What have you gotten yourself into?”

I looked down at my Carrharts, which I’d finally broken in with three consecutive washings. My clothing, my shoes, my hair, in fact, every inch of exposed skin on me was covered with a thick film of sawdust. He reached out and gingerly flicked a spot of sawdust from my cheek.

“I’m refinishing the kitchen floor,” I reported happily. “No more bile green linoleum.”

His eyes strayed from me to the contrasting swatches of green on either side of the front door.

“What’s with the paint?” he asked.

“Oh. I’m, uh, trying out colors.”

“I like this one, on the left,” he said promptly. “Hey, I’ve been trying to reach you for the past two days. I even dropped by, but you were out. Did Ella Kate tell you I stopped by?”

“No,” I said. “But that doesn’t surprise me. We’ve had words, she and I.”

“Anyway,” Tee went on, “I know it’ll seem like last minute, but there’s a Middle Georgia Bar Association dinner tonight at the country club. I was hoping you’d go with me. It’s not a formal or anything, but it would give you a chance to meet some local folks. I think you’d have a good time.”

He smiled winningly, like a schoolboy presenting his teacher with an
apple. “Oh,” I said. “That’s so sweet, Tee. I’d love to go.”

“Good,” he said. “Dinner’s at eight. Cocktails at seven—”

“But I can’t go,” I said. “My floor. I’m right in the middle of it.”

“Take a break,” he urged. “The floor will be there when you get back.”

“Sorry,” I told him. “Maybe next time.”

Ella Kate came and went as I worked, stepping disdainfully over the piles of sawdust I’d swept up, sniffing and muttering dire warnings about how I was ruining what had been a perfectly good kitchen.

I ignored her comments and attacked the sawdust with Bobby’s borrowed Shop-Vac. I had a schedule to keep.

Once I’d achieved a satin-smooth floor (or nearly smooth—with the exception of the unavoidable gouged places), I was in a fever to see the project through to completion.

“What’s next?” I’d asked as we loaded the sanders in the truck for the return trip to Home Depot late Saturday.

“We put down good thick paper on that pretty floor of yours, and leave it down till we’re done with everything else,” Bobby said. “Last thing we do, we apply the finish. Guess you need to decide how you want it to look. Do you want a high-gloss finish? Or more of a matte, natural look?”

“Matte,” I said promptly. “Why can’t I put the finish down now? I’m dying to see how it’ll look, now that I’m this close. I could start tonight. I bet it’d be dry by morning.”

“Oh, noooo,” Bobby said. “Once you put the finish on, you got to let it set and cure for three, four days. Can’t nobody walk on it or nothing. You done a good job on that floor, Dempsey. Now, it’s Saturday night. I notice you got Tee Berryhill and Jimmy Maynard dropping by here pretty regular. I bet one of them boys would be tickled to death to take a pretty girl like you out on a Saturday night.”

“No dates,” I said succinctly. “Work. If you won’t let me put the finish on the floor, would you do me favor?”

He looked wary. “Depends on what it is.”

“Loan me your electric screwdriver. I want to get started on those cupboard doors tonight.”

W
hen I got out of the shower Sunday morning, I heard my cell phone ringing. Wrapping a towel around me, I hurried down the hall to my bedroom. Fishing the phone out of my pocketbook, I was gratified to see that the caller was Lindsay.

“Linds,” I said gleefully. “How are you? How’s Stephanie? Do you guys miss me as much as I miss you? Guess what. I’ve spent the whole weekend stripping the kitchen floor. You should see it, Linds. The most beautiful heart pine. I started on the cabinet doors last night—”

“Who is this?” Lindsay said, her tone flat. “Is this the Dempsey Killebrew I’ve lived with for the past two years? What have you done with my friend Dempsey?”

“I know,” I said, laughing. “How crazy is this? I haven’t worn a pair of heels since I moved down here.”

“Demps,” Lindsay said, pausing. “We need to talk.”

“What’s wrong?” I said, feeling chilled. “Are you in trouble? Is it Stephanie? Don’t tell me she and Greg broke up again—”

“I’m fine. Stephanie and Greg are fine. We’re all fine, Dempsey,” Lindsay said. “Look. Have you seen this morning’s
Post
?”

I sank down onto my bed. I was freezing cold. “No. I don’t have any way to see the
Post
. I don’t have Internet access at the house. Oh God, Lindsay. Not that reporter. Oh shit. It’s bad, isn’t it.”

“It isn’t good,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “Especially the photo of you in those overalls. When did you start dressing like Larry the Cable Guy?”

“Oh my God.” I said. “I told that guy to get off my porch. I should have smashed the damn camera.”

“You should burn those overalls. And lose the plaid flannel shirt. And the bandanna. Immediately. Look. Have you spoken to Alex lately?”

I threw myself backward on the bed. “No. No. No.”

“I knew it,” Lindsay said. “What a shit he is. I’m sorry, Demps, but that man is a total prick.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I told her. “I have spoken to Alex. But only briefly. After that reporter, Shalani something, showed up here this week.”

“Shalani Byers,” Lindsay said grimly. “Remember that name, Dempsey. ’Cause I think she’s planning on earning herself a Pulitzer by writing about you. And Hoddergate.”

“Read me the story,” I told her.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Lindsay said. “It’s pretty brutal.”

I stood up, gathered the bedspread off the bed, and wrapped it around me, swaddling my still damp, naked body entirely in the bedspread made in a factory I’d been named after.

“Read it,” I said. “All of it.”

“Even the headline?”

“Every word.”

“Okay. The headline says: ‘Hoddergate Lobbyist Blames Aide for Hiring Hookers for Congressman.’”

“Oh no,” I whispered. “Is this on the front page of the
Post
?”

“Front page, lead story, above the fold,” said Lindsay, who’d been a journalism major as an undergrad.

“Go on.”

“Here goes: ‘Sources close to the government investigation delving into charges that a prominent Washington lobbyist bribed Representative Anthony Licata (R-New Jersey) in return for Licata’s support on a crucial energy bill pending before Congress say that the lobbyist has admitted that one of his employees hired prostitutes for Licata.

“‘Alexander Hodder, founding partner of Hodder and Associates, whose client roster includes half a dozen oil interests, reportedly supplied the federal grand jury looking into the allegations with credit card receipts showing that his top aide, a woman named Dempsey Killebrew, paid two women a total of $5,600 to provide sexual services to Licata
during a November junket to Lyford Cay, the Bahamas. Hodder’s name reportedly came to the attention of the FBI during their investigation in to charges of corruption involving Representative Licata.’”

“My name. On the front page of the
Washington Post,
” I moaned, pounding the pillows beside me. “Oh God. It can’t get any worse than this.”

“Oh, but it does,” Lindsay assured me.

“‘Licata, sixty-two, married, and the father of four grown children, from Rumford, NJ, has denied any wrongdoing, and has publicly vowed to fight his recent indictment on criminal charges. If convicted of fraud and public corruption, the four-time Republican could face a fifteen-year prison sentence for each incident of bribery.

“‘Hodder, fifty, and married for ten years to Virginia socialite Patricia “Trish” Caldwell, claims he was stunned by his recent discovery of proof that an “inexperienced” associate whom he termed “overzealous in her attempts to impress her superiors” had solicited prostitutes and paid for them with her company-issued American Express credit card.’”

“Inexperienced? Overzealous?” I balled up my fists and chewed on my knuckles. “That’s just unreal. Lindsay, Alex Hodder is a complete control freak. He wouldn’t even allow me to send a form letter to a client unless he read it, edited it, and initialed it,” I cried.

Lindsay just kept reading without comment.

“‘AmEx receipts billed to Ms. Killebrew’s card reportedly show that she signed off on a $4,000 charge from a company called Pleasure Chest Ltd., whose employee, a woman calling herself Mahogany Foxx, allegedly provided Licata, who has undergone two knee replacements, with wakeboard lessons. Later, on that same date, November 29, which was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Ms. Killebrew also authorized another $1,600 charge for a massage therapist named Tiki Finesse to visit Licata in his $1,288-a-night suite at the Lyford Cay Resort.’”

Lindsay snickered. “Mahogany Foxx? Tiki Finesse? Dempsey, where did you find those women? Were those really their names?”

“How do I know their real names?” I shrieked. “Alex told me to call the number and book this girl to give Licata wakeboard lessons. The same thing with the massage therapist. As far as I know, I never talked
to either one of them, and I certainly never saw them. I told that to that damned reporter too.”

“You should see the picture of Mahogany Foxx in the
Post,
” Lindsay said. “I don’t see how she walked upright, let alone balanced on a wakeboard, with a set of knockers like that. There’s a photo of good ol’ Tiki too,” she added. “Oh wait. It says here that Tiki’s not her real name. Big surprise. Her real name is Thelma Jean Fessenden, and she’s from Belle Glade, Florida. I guess this is her police mug shot. It says she has previous arrests for solicitation, rude and lascivious behavior, and assault and battery. Maybe that’s how she lost her two front teeth.”

“I don’t feel so good,” I told Lindsay, gripping my belly. “I think I might hurl.”

“I can stop reading if you want,” Lindsay volunteered. “You could call me back when you feel better.”

I swallowed the wave of bile rising in my throat. “I’m never going to feel better. Let’s just get this over with.”

“All right,” Lindsay said, sighing. “Let’s see. Oh yeah.

“‘Reached Friday at his residence in Georgetown, Hodder said that Ms. Killebrew acted on her own in hiring Ms. Foxx and Ms. Finesse.

“‘ “I was shocked when I saw the evidence that Dempsey Killebrew had made these completely unauthorized charges for prostitutes,” Hodder told the
Post
. “I certainly have never condoned or suggested such an action. Unfortunately, Miss Killebrew’s ill-advised and illegal behavior has brought shame and embarrassment to this firm. Naturally, we discharged her as soon as we learned about her involvement in this matter. I have turned over to the grand jury all Miss Killebrew’s credit card records, as well as any other paperwork related to her employment here, and I look forward to cooperating fully with the government in an attempt to restore the good name of Alexander Hodder and Hodder and Associates.” ’”

“How could he?” I wailed. “He’s making it look like hiring these women was all my idea. All I did was what he asked me to do. What he ordered me to do. Doesn’t it say that I told this Shalani Byers that I was innocent?”

“Lemme see,” Lindsay said. “Oh yeah. She says you said, ‘No comment.’
Here’s some more stuff about you. Ooh. Ouch. Doesn’t make you look too good, Demps.”

“Read it anyway.”

“‘Ms. Killebrew, a 2007 graduate of Georgetown Law School, fled Washington soon after the Hoddergate scandal erupted, and has since gone into self-imposed seclusion in an obscure small town about an hour south of Atlanta, Georgia.’”

“Fled? She’s making it sound like I was driven out of town by villagers with pickaxes and torches. I had to move out of Washington because Alex fired me and I couldn’t get a job anyplace else. And I am so
not
in seclusion. Lindsay, do people in seclusion shop at the Piggly Wiggly? Do they go to Home Depot?”

“I know, baby,” Lindsay soothed. “Do you still want to hear the rest?”

“You mean there’s more? How much worse could it get?”

I soon found out just how much deeper Shalani Byers’s wounds would go.

“‘Neighbors in Guthrie, Georgia, a down-at-the-heels village with one stoplight and an abandoned bedspread factory, describe Miss Killebrew, twenty-seven, as a shadowy figure who dresses in a dead uncle’s work boots and flannel shirts and currently lives in a dilapidated mansion that she shares with an elderly distant relative and an incontinent cocker spaniel.’”

“Liar!” I gritted my teeth. “I never even touched Norbert’s work boots. That’s a complete fabrication. I borrowed his sneakers, and some overalls and shirts. I bought Carrharts, but it took a while to get them broken in. As for Shorty, Ella Kate walks him three or four times a day. He’s irritating, but I don’t think he’s incontinent.”

The other end of the line got very quiet.

“You’re starting to scare me, Dempsey,” Lindsay said. “We’ve got to get you out of there before you go completely native. When are you coming home?”

“After this thing in the
Post
? With everybody inside the beltway reading this crap and assuming the worst? Who’s going to hire me? What the hell am I going to do now, Lindsay?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s not a very flattering story, to say the least.”

“Goooooddd,” I said, flouncing myself down on my wheezy old mattress. “I’m screwed.”

“You need to talk to Alex Hodder,” Lindsay said. “The dickhead. This is all his fault.”

“I just can’t believe Alex is doing any of this,” I said. “He knows the truth. He knows I would never have knowingly hired whores for Licata. I never even bought as much as a ham sandwich with that credit card without him okaying it. He would never willingly do this. Not without coercion. The only thing I can figure is, his lawyers are pressuring him to cut some kind of deal with the feds.”

“Wake up and look at your back, Dempsey,” Lindsay retorted.

I reflexively touched my right hand to my left shoulder blade. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you see the tread marks?” she asked. “Alex Hodder is throwing you under the bus. And all you can talk about is what a sweet guy he is. Open your eyes, girl.”

“He’s just protecting himself. And the firm. You can’t blame him for that.”

“Oh no?” Her voice was mocking. “I was saving the worst for last. Listen to this. And then tell me what you think about good old Alex Hodder.”

She cleared her throat and read on.

“‘Although the federal prosecutor’s office is keeping mum about Dempsey Killebrew’s role in the Hoddergate scandal, at least one employee of Hodder and Associates made it clear this week that she believes investigators should take a closer look at Alex Hodder’s closest aide.

“‘Hodder and Associates executive administrator Ruby Beaubien said the company, at her urging, has hired a forensic accountant to examine “any and all documents and expense records generated by the disgraced junior lobbyist.” ’”

“Disgraced!” I yelped. “Oh my God, she’s calling me a thief and a liar, as well as a pimp. This is unbelievable. I thought Ruby was my
friend.”

“Wait,” Lindsay ordered.

“‘ “It was clear to many of us at the firm that Dempsey Killebrew had an unhealthy and inappropriate attraction to Alexander Hodder,” Ms. Beaubien said. “Although Mr. Hodder made it quite clear that her attentions were not welcome, and that he did not reciprocate her affection, Miss Killebrew continued, in a grossly inappropriate manner, to pursue a personal relationship with Mr. Hodder, who is a happily married man. Finally, after hounding Mr. Hodder with dozens and dozens of calls to his cell phone, and a drunken midnight visit to his residence, I insisted to Mr. Hodder, that despite his concern for the young woman’s welfare, she be terminated.” ’”

“Oh. No,” I whispered. “No way.” I put the phone down and dashed blindly down the hall to the bathroom, where I unceremoniously barfed my brains out.

I have no idea how long I stayed in the bathroom, hanging on to the cold white porcelain commode like a drowning swimmer. I do know that I heard my cell phone ringing several more times. I heard the doorbell ringing, and then Shorty’s crazed barking. After a while, Ella Kate started banging on the bathroom door.

“Hey!” she called. “Are you still in there?”

“Go away,” I croaked.

“You go away,” she countered. “And take that durned phone of yours with you. It’s Sunday, the Lord’s day, and that phone of yours keeps a-ringin’ and a-ringin’. You got men coming and going and wanting to know where you are and what you’re a-doin’. It don’t look right for a Christian maiden lady like myself to have men hanging around here this way.”

“Send them away,” I said. “I don’t want to see anybody.”

“Send them away yourself,” Ella Kate said. “I’m going to church. And when I get back here after Sunday school, there better not be any men hanging around. Or I’ll set Shorty on them—and you.”

I heard her sensible lace-up oxfords clomping down the hallway, and then down the steps and out the front door.

Finally, when my legs were starting to cramp, I stood up shakily and
looked at myself in the bathroom mirror.

There were dark circles under my bloodshot eyes, and my face was red and blotchy from crying and retching.

“You look like a deranged person,” I told my reflection. “Like a stalker.”

I dressed hurriedly—and this time in my own clothes. Even though it was close to seventy outside, I put on the wool pants and sweater I’d worn the day I arrived in Guthrie. I put on makeup—foundation, powder, blush, eye shadow, liner, mascara, the works. I grabbed my pocketbook and the car keys, and hurried out the back door, locking it behind me.