Just South of Perfect

by Grace Palmer

  Until now, apparently.

  “I’ll start,” Brenda said, tucking her dyed black hair behind her ear. “I’ve always wanted to audition for The Price is Right.”

  Stella gaped. “After all the sass you gave me over daytime television?”

  “I know, I know, but I watch it every time I’m home sick from work, and I’ve always wanted to go and audition. I almost did when we were on vacation in California once, but I chickened out. And you know what? I’ve always regretted it.”

  “Please tell me that isn’t your life’s biggest regret.”

  “You couldn’t handle my biggest regret,” Brenda said, narrowing her eyes before shrugging. “Which is why we are focusing on dreams. Now, tell me yours.”

  A few hours later, when Stella was in her car on the side of the highway, stuck in a reception dead zone with no idea how to get help, the conversation with Brenda was all a blur. She remembered mumbling something about working as a designer in Boston before, suddenly, she was crying. Not normal crying, either. Full-blown hysterics. Puffy-eyed, snotty-nosed, red-faced crying.

  Brenda had taken advantage of her weakened state. It was the only explanation Stella could come up with. Stella had told Brenda about the dreams she’d pushed aside—about her aspirations of working as a creative director for an ad agency or as an animator—and Brenda had made her believe they were possible. Brenda had tricked Stella into thinking if she just got in her car, drove to Boston, and tried, that she would succeed.

  But the smoke billowing out from under the hood of her car told a very different, very realistic story: the end of the road was never where you expected it to be.

  Often, it was much, much sooner.

  2

  Stella should have been paying closer attention to where she was going.

  According to Brenda, driving blindly without concern for where exactly you were going was part of the fun, but Stella disagreed.

  “Fun” would have been getting her car serviced before taking it on a long trip.

  “Fun” would have been replenishing her emergency stash of water bottles and protein bars in the trunk.

  True, genuine “fun” would have been informing someone in her life—literally anyone—about where she was going and when to expect to hear from her. As it was, though, no one knew Stella was now stranded in the middle of nowhere with no cell-phone service and one protein bar (in a flavor she despised). No one was looking for her. She was entirely alone.

  The knock of loneliness at the back door of her mind grew louder, threatening to drown out the rest of her thoughts, but Stella took a deep breath. She was no more alone now than she had been at home this afternoon. No more alone now than she had been for the last five weeks. The problem now wasn’t that she was alone; it was that her car wouldn’t start back up. Making the problem bigger than it really was wouldn’t help.

  Side-stepping the enticing pity party she wanted badly to throw for herself, Stella dusted the protein crumbs from her shirt and pulled the latch under her seat to pop the hood. Immediately, foul smoke swirled out from under the hood.

  “It could be worse,” she said aloud, dispelling her own dark thoughts.

  She rattled off all the ways it could be worse: it could be an outright fire in her engine. She could have gotten in an accident and been injured. She could have taken a wrong turn and driven straight off a cliff into the ocean.

  Things could always be worse.

  Luckily, Stella wasn’t entirely useless when it came to cars. One benefit of being a single mom was that Stella had learned how to look out for herself. She’d taught herself to change a flat tire when Jace was only six months old. He’d suffered from colic, so neither of them had slept more than a couple of hours straight in days, and the neighbors kept banging on the thin walls of her studio apartment and screaming for her to stop the crying. Stella remembered feeling as if the world was closing in on her like booby-trapped walls covered in spikes in an adventure movie.

  To get out, she’d packed a diaper bag, a sandwich for herself, and a jar of pureed carrots for Jace and had driven to the edge of town. The farm was owned by someone, but Stella had been to the spot many times in her teen years with friends and boyfriends, and it was far enough away from the house that no one would ever know.

  She had settled underneath a large tree just beyond a busted wooden fence. It offered plenty of shade and a worn spot at the base where too many people to count had sat and looked out on the fields beyond. She sat there with Jace, admiring his plump cheeks and pink skin in the sunlight, and the soft breeze felt like the first breath of fresh air she’d breathed in months. It felt like cracking open a window in a forgotten attic and dusting away the cobwebs.

  She’d cried, Jace had giggled, and after an hour, they had gotten back in the car to drive home.

  Only to discover the tire was flat. Somewhere on the dirt road, she’d driven over a nail, and while she’d sat at the base of the tree enjoying her afternoon, the air had been leaking out of her tire.

  Once again, the world had felt heavy, the odds stacked against her. She didn’t have a cell phone, she’d already eaten her sandwich, and Jace only had enough diapers left for two hours at most. Stella had to figure this out.

  So, she did.

  Stella had set Jace’s car seat along the side of the road and sang him songs as she pulled out the spare tire and accompanying tools that came along with the car when she’d bought it. It had taken her an hour, and she had to change a dirty diaper in the middle, but she had done it, and she’d never felt more accomplished.

  Of course, a flat tire was a bit more straightforward than whatever was happening now.

  The battery light in the dash had never worked right. It flicked on and off for seemingly no reason—at least not that Stella or her usual mechanic could tell—so she had mostly taken to ignoring it. In this case, that may have been her downfall.

  She could remember the battery light flicking on not long after she left her house. The lights in the dash also seemed dimmer, but she hadn’t paid them any mind as she drove, instead trying to take Brenda’s advice and push all worries from her mind. As it turned out, she should have been worried.

  The sun was almost entirely hidden behind the horizon, and the sky was gray, only moments from fading to black. Stella pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight. She hoped illuminating the situation might make it clear what is going on, but all it did was make her painfully aware she had no idea what she was looking at.

  Over the years, she had taken good care of her car. She always made sure to get her oil changed and follow the manufacturer’s recommendations for flushing and changing fluids, and she had a great relationship with her mechanic, Arlen. He gave her high-mileage oil changes but only charged her standard prices.

  Somehow, Stella had thought all of that made her handy and independent, but it really just made her a responsible car owner, not a grease monkey. Changing a tire was not the same thing as knowing the difference between the transmission and the alternator, and unfortunately for Stella, that meant she was effectively stranded.

  The road was only two lanes, without a street lamp in sight. A line of trees blocked sightlines and light on one side of the road, but the other side was an empty field. Maybe that was the faint glow of lights off in the distance—signs of civilization and cell-phone bars—but Stella wasn’t sure she was willing to risk it. Especially in the dark. Especially since Brenda had taken her sensible walking shoes out of her bag and thrown them deep into her closet. Tromping across a field in sandals in the dark sounded like a perfect way to end up with a twisted ankle at the bottom of a well.

  Admittedly, falling in a well was probably an outlandish scenario. But then again, just this morning, Stella would have said the idea of her taking an impromptu trip on nothing more than Brenda’s recommendation was outlandish, and look at her now.

  No, the best option was to stay with the car and wait to see who drove by. If she flagged someone do
wn, they could help her, or at the very least fetch help from the closest town.

  As soon as the thought crossed her mind, Stella heard the rumble of an approaching car. She darted out from behind the hood and waved her arms wildly in the air. Half of her expected the headlights to scream past her without even slowing down. After all, she had never stopped to help someone on the side of the road, so why would anyone stop to help her—especially at dusk?

  However, the lights climbed the small hill behind her and then veered off to the side of the road. Stella could tell the vehicle was a truck of some kind, but the lights were too bright to tell much beyond that. The cab was lost in darkness, and she didn’t even see the person climb down and start walking towards her until a shadow cut across the beam of the headlights.

  A very large shadow.

  Stella had imagined a kind old man or a cute family coming to her rescue. Maybe she’d talk with the wife and bond with the woman over motherhood while her husband inspected beneath the hood.

  Naively, Stella hadn’t even considered the possibility that she’d be waving down a large, lone man until the looming shape was in front of her, hands on his hips.

  “Car trouble?” His voice was deep and booming. Stella was tempted to tell him no so he’d go away.

  It was getting dark and late, and the road was deserted beyond the two of them. The trees just beyond the ditch would be the perfect hiding spot for her body, and no one would ever find her. No one would even know where to begin searching.

  “Kind of,” she said nervously, taking a step away from the stranger. “It died and won’t start back up again. Some smoke came out too.”

  The man laughed. “That definitely sounds like car trouble. Mind if I take a look?”

  He sounded nice enough, but that didn’t mean anything. Nice people killed people all the time. Well, maybe not all the time, but often enough that Stella wasn’t going to let down her guard just yet.

  She nodded and backed away from the man as he moved forward, rounding the front of the car and bending over the hood. Stella positioned herself next to the passenger side door, ready to flee into the night at the first sign of trouble.

  Suddenly, a bright light filled the darkness, and Stella had to blink against the onslaught to her pupils. It took her a second to realize the man had his own flashlight.

  He shone the light under the hood for a minute, squinting and poking around at the machinery. Then, he reached his hand down between the engine and whatever contraption lived next to the motor and let out a resigned hum. “You’ve definitely got car trouble. I’m afraid there isn’t anything I can do.”

  Stella frowned. “You know that after only a minute?”

  “I’m sorry. I never actually introduced myself.” He stepped forward suddenly, surprising Stella enough that she scrambled backward, nearly tripping on a crack in the old pavement. “I’m Drew Baldwin. I work part-time as a mechanic in Willow Beach. You ever heard of it?”

  Stella shook her head.

  She always knew when Jace was lying to her. His ears would go red at the tips the second a dishonest word came out of his mouth, and he couldn’t meet her eyes. Jace always claimed his mom had some kind of superpower, but she was just great at recognizing his tells.

  This man, however, either wasn’t lying or didn’t have any tells. He looked straight into Stella’s eyes when he spoke, using the back of his wrist to wipe sweat away from his forehead, and grinned at her.

  It was the lopsided, casual smile of a young man who knew all too well the effect he had on women. Years earlier, the man’s attention would have made Stella weak-kneed. Now, he might as well have been her son standing in front of her. This man was certainly older than Jace, but not by enough for him to not look childish to her.

  “It’s a small town just up the road.” He tilted his head in the direction of the faint lights Stella had noticed earlier. Auburn hair flopped over his forehead, and he pushed it back once again. “About twenty minutes. I can drive you there if you want. Because this car isn’t moving unless you hitch it to a tow truck.”

  Stella bit her lip.

  She was vulnerable. She knew it, and this Drew Baldwin knew it too. If he wanted to attack her, he didn’t need her to agree to get in his truck to do it.

  So, if she was already at risk, would it really be so bad to get in his car? He seemed nice enough.

  “I’m sure you’ve noticed by now,” Drew added, “but you’re in a dead zone. Cell reception doesn’t come back until another ten minutes up the road.”

  Something about hearing him say the words “dead zone” raised Stella’s defenses once again. She crossed her arms over her chest and planted her sandaled feet on the rocky shoulder of the road. “I don’t want to leave my car here, but I’d love it if you could call me a tow truck when you find the elusive reception.”

  “You don’t trust me?” Drew’s grin turned amused. But before Stella could even open her mouth to explain, he shook his head. “No, it’s okay. I wouldn’t trust me, either. Sure, Ms.—?”

  “Pierce. Stella Pierce.”

  “Sure, Ms. Pierce,” Drew said, dipping into a low bow. “I’ll call the tow truck for you. But when it gets here, make sure you mention my name. The driver will tell you who I am, and then when we run into one another again, you’ll be certain you can trust me.”

  Drew winked before turning and getting back in his truck, and Stella didn’t think it would be wise to ever trust a man like that. Not because he was a murderer or anything. But Drew Baldwin was a heartbreaker if she’d ever seen one.

  3

  Drew Baldwin was a liar.

  A heartbreaker and a liar.

  It had been an hour and a half since he drove away with the promise of calling for a tow truck, yet there was no tow truck in sight. He’d said Willow Beach was only twenty minutes away, but Stella was beginning to wonder if the encounter happened at all.

  Maybe she had been stranded on the side of the road longer than she thought. Maybe there was a gas leak in the car and the fumes were making her hallucinate. She propped open the passenger side door a bit more just to be safe. Mosquitoes the size of bumblebees buzzed around her, but the night was too balmy to leave the doors and windows closed.

  She’d already changed out of the jeans and T-shirt she’d been in before, opting for a wrinkled cotton dress Brenda must have thrown in her suitcase when she wasn’t looking. She’d bought it without trying it on the summer before, and then had never worn it. The fabric always seemed to cling to her body in the wrong places and accentuated her least favorite parts of herself, but she had never thrown it out. Now, she was glad she had it. Without the dress, she might have had to resort to using the pocketknife from her emergency kit to cut the legs off her jeans.

  Stella was chewing on her last breath mint, trying to assuage the rumble of hunger in her stomach and wondering if she shouldn’t start walking down the highway in search of reception when headlights appeared on the road ahead of her.

  As the truck approached, she could see the red lights on the hitch and the yellow bar lights running across the top of the cab and along the bumper, and she knew she had been saved.

  She climbed out of the passenger seat and waved her hands in the air just in case. Since no one else was around, she found it hard to believe the driver could ever miss her, but she wasn’t willing to take the chance that he might.

  The horn honked in recognition, and Stella stood back as the large truck drove past her car and then pulled a U-turn to spin around and park in front of her.

  Sam’s Auto Shop was printed on the side of the yellow truck in bright blue letters next to a cartoon drawing of a small man in denim coveralls. The animated figure had a wrench in his hand and a silly grin on his face.

  The man that walked around the back of the tow truck looked nothing like the animation. Instead of coveralls, he had on a pair of jeans with a blue button-down shirt tucked in. And instead of being small and silly, the man was broad, tall, a
nd serious. His face was tan and square, dotted with light stubble, and completely and entirely flat. Expressionless.

  “Are you Stella Pierce?”

  “The one and only.” Stella winced at her lame response but rallied quickly. “Drew Baldwin called you on my behalf?”

  The man nodded and immediately began the process of hitching her car to the truck. “He works for me part-time. He said he offered you a ride, but you refused.”

  Stella’s face warmed. “I was all alone out here. A woman can never be too careful.”

  “You’re still all alone,” he said, arching an eyebrow at her before slipping the hook under her car. “And I prefer doing this in the light of day.”

  He was right. She was still alone with a strange man in the middle of nowhere, but something about the official truck made her feel safe. Should it? Was she in just as much danger as she’d been in before?

  No. This man might be surly, but he was hooking her car up. Who would haul the car of their murder victim around behind them? No one. Plus, unless he and Drew were in the murder business together, Drew had sent this man to get Stella. He’d recognize her name if she disappeared or turned up dead.

  Funny that Drew Baldwin was now Stella’s saving grace, but the fact he knew she existed and was nearby made her feel so much better. Good enough to say exactly what she was thinking to this strange man without mincing words.

  “It looks like you’re managing just fine in the dark.” Stella crossed her arms and arched an eyebrow right back at him.

  She didn’t want to be out here anymore than he did. In fact, she wanted to be out here far less than he did. At least he would be getting paid for this. Stella was going to get charged an arm and a leg to haul her car to some shop where she’d get charged her other arm and leg to fix whatever was wrong with it. If anyone had the right to be upset, it was her, not him.

  The man turned towards her, but instead of his neutral expression from earlier, his eyebrows were lifted in surprise. When he did finally look away, his brow was furrowed.