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Does this house even have running water?
My pale pink and white wardrobe wouldn’t do so well in a place like this.
Oh, shut it! None of this will change the fact there wasn’t enough time to take all the money I needed or cover my tracks all that well.
She dropped her hand to her side. Sticking to the truth would mean less chance of getting caught in lies. Maybe she could take advantage of these new people knowing stuff about her. Besides, she had her burner phone and would use nothing but cash to get by, and Harlow itself seemed safe enough…
“I just looked at a map and liked the name Harlow.” She gave Frank what she hoped was a playful, casual shrug. Oh, she hated lying. “And I figured, ‘Why not?’”
Why not, indeed. Minnesota was the home of Prince, a musical genius who’d been her happy place for as long as she could remember. That was a positive, right?
Why, oh why, did all the good artists die young?
Then there was Betty White, or at least her character, Rose Nylund from the 90s sitcom, The Golden Girls. Emilia had grown up watching the reruns, and Rose was downright adorable with her outlandish stories about St. Olaf, Minnesota.
That said, Emilia’s first and only love had once lived here too. He’d insisted Minnesota had its charms. The relationship had ended in a literal bloody mess, though she couldn’t exactly hold that disaster against the state.
Fargo.Yes, that had Minnesota written all over it too. She’d always liked Fargo. The detective lady in that movie seemed nice. Maybe she’d meet more nice people like that here, minus Fargo’s murders and extortion, of course. With all she’d been through, she really did need more “nice” and less “murder and extortion.”
She blinked up at Frank, with his pale blue eyes and weathered, narrow face, who seemed to take the dragging silence as his cue to instigate a guided tour. There weren’t that many rooms, but he skipped all the glossy talk in favor of pointing out what needed repair. For such a small place, the list grew and grew, and his blunt honesty added weight to her already burdened shoulders.
The last room was the kitchen, and it turned out to be the worst. Lopsided cabinets barely clung to life on the right wall, the puke-green color somehow competing with the garish, chipped laminate counters in an outdated shade of blinding tangerine.
The whole scene screamed desperation, as in, only a desperate person would choose to live here. Someone with limited funds and nowhere else to go. Someone like her. Desperate and broke. Lucky for Frank.
Though, lucky for her too, maybe. At least, Anthony would never ever expect to find her here. In a remote town, and a house so… so one rung above dilapidated. All because in nine years of marriage, he didn’t know her well enough to understand that, unlike him, her happiness didn’t rely on lavish surroundings. He’d probably already scoured her credit card bills for charges to the Hotel Bel-Air.
Or maybe he’s already in jail?
Even that wishful thought didn’t stop her from glancing over her shoulder since defeat and trauma did not fade so easily. Maybe never. Besides, even if Anthony was locked up, she couldn’t be confident he wouldn’t send someone else to find her.
Frank returned to rubbing his neck. “You should know, I’ve called in a favor with a friend. He’ll swing by and start work on this kitchen right away.Maureen and I, we don’t expect you to go knockin’ things together yourself, and now that we have a renter, we consider the upgrade an investment.”
Her first instinct was to jump up and down out of pure gratitude, but then a different, more sobering thought crept in. The fewer people who saw her, the better, so maybe she was best to try to throw this helpful man off.
She tore her gaze from Frank, certain he already read her impending lie. “I can handle this all on my own. I’m quite handy, you know. And the mess, it will keep me busy while I figure out what to do with myself in this town.”
Her face heated, and her limbs lost strength. Again, lying didn’t come easy, and the list of things she could do—mopping, scrubbing, maybe painting—didn’t compare to the much longer list of things she couldn’t manage. Ripping out non-functional cabinets, for one…
Frank swatted his hand in a dismissive gesture. “We’ll hear none of that now. People round these parts like to help just about anyone who needs it, and lady, you need it. Call it ‘Minnesota nice’ if you wanna, but Harlow folk love to poke around in each other’s business, especially new people, so you best get used to the locals invitin’ themselves over.”
Her mouth fell open, and she readied to insist on privacy, but her words seized at the crunch of tires outside. The louder-than-normal engine noises indicated a larger vehicle; one parked close to the back door attached to the kitchen.
She startled at the slam of a car door, her gaze hitting Frank, his brow now etched in deep quizzical lines.
Had Anthony found her so soon? He did own an SUV.
She wanted to move but couldn’t. The thud of boots over the back veranda made the old boards creak, and her heart thundered so hard it seemed to reverberate against her ribs, triggering a heavy wave of nausea. At the same time, her skin stung all over as if her baby pink sleeves were made of sandpaper and not luxury cotton.
A large silhouette crossed the kitchen window. Frank turned toward the back door, his hand reaching for the handle.
She cleared her throat, but Frank didn’t seem to hear. “I. Umm. Need to go.”
He cracked the door open, giving her a glimpse of the fly screen just behind. She mumbled something about washing her hands in the bathroom and spun away.
“Emilia?”
Whoever the male voice belonged to, she hadn’t seen him, but he’d seen her. Or maybe her slow escape wasn’t so much to blame as her being thoughtless enough to speak. Either way, this man recognized her, and she didn’t know how.
An eerie silence filled the room, daring her to turn and look at him. An ancient memory trickled in like water through a crack in a stone, and a bigger part of her didn’t need to turn to know who this was.
Not Anthony. No. Someone even more unlikely.
And though she should have been relieved, with all her heart, she still wanted to escape.
