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The afternoon after Christmas, her mom called up the stairs.
“There’s a gentleman on the phone for you!”
The gentleman turned out to be a former friend from her high school days, Casey Pickett. His mother was church friends with her mom. He’d gone to a different high school, but growing up, they’d seen each other at church once a week. When they got a little older, they went out a few times to football games and dances. She went with him to his junior prom; he went with her to her senior prom. They’d never officially been boyfriend and girlfriend, but she liked Casey; he always made her laugh.
They’d spent a lot of time parking in his daddy’s pickup truck, getting as close to the cliff as they could without taking the plunge, but she’d been a good girl at that age. Sort of.
She picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“Annie Weaver.” Casey’s deep voice was still familiar. “Will you go to the dance with me?”
She laughed. “No, sir,” she said. “I’m too old for that.”
“Oh,” he said, feigning disappointment. “How about dinner and a movie?”
“Well, that sounds fine.”
He picked her up at six thirty, which felt a little early for dinner—she was still on California time—but he took her to a decent restaurant.
“Mel Gibson frozen in time, Steve Martin as a con man, or a paralyzed soap opera star in the bayou?” he asked as they stood outside the cinema box office, studying the movie times.
“Frozen Mel Gibson, obviously.”
Casey held her hand during the movie, and she let him, pushing Helen out of her thoughts. After the movie, they drove to where they used to park. Casey leaned in to kiss her, and she let him, trying not to think about Helen’s lips and tongue.
They didn’t go past a little light necking—it was, after all, her time of the month—but she wondered if she would have let him go all the way. Helen had used Annie to get something out of hersystem. Annie could use people too. Could be spiteful. Could be casual.
Casey dropped her off at home, kissed her cheek at the door, and said, “It was good to see you, Annie.”
“Likewise,” she said and watched him walk back to his car.
Her parents were still up. She told her mom she’d had a nice time, then kissed her daddy’s cheek. Climbed the stairs, washed up, and crawled into bed, trying so hard not to think about Helen that she’d circled right back to thinking about nothing else.
Here she was, in her old bedroom in her parents’ house, and she was lonely and homesick. She went on a date with a lovely young man who still doted on her, wanting nothing more than to make her happy, and all she could do was compare him to her landlord.
She turned and pressed her face into her pillow.
Chapter 13
Patty sat in Annie’s deskchair and watched her pack.
“You sure I can borrow this little suitcase?” Annie asked from inside the closet.
“You can have it, honey,” her mom said. “We got a new set just last year, remember?”
“Okay. Thank you again, then.” She started pulling work clothes off the hangers, items that she’d left behind when moving. Blouses, skirts, slacks. She packed them loosely enough to make her mother wince. Annie ignored it. If her mom wanted to take over packing, she would gladly step back and eat the rest of the chocolate in her nightstand.
“Can I ask you a question?”
Now it was Annie’s turn to wince. Up until now, there’d been so many people around that she’d been able to dodge her mother’s direct queries, but it seemed her time was up.
“Of course.”
“Are you happy out there?”
That was not the question Annie was expecting, and she froze, her hands hovering over the suitcase.
