by Louisa West
Ben let out a low whistle. “Nothin’ like that in Mosswood,” he said apologetically. “'Cept for coffee makers.” He stepped back to pat the top of a display of two 12-cup coffee brewers, which he seemed quite proud of. Rosie thought he had every right to be. Filtered coffee sounded divine after two days drinking it out of a kettle, grounds and all.
“Best advice I can give is to make a list and trek on out to Huntsville,” he continued. “It’s a ways north, but if you wait ‘til you have a few things to get, it can make the trip worthwhile. They got Walmart, electrical stores, you name it. Only make sure you’re back on the road home by four in the afternoon.” He lifted his brows at her, indicating that this last pearl of wisdom was the most important of all. “Else you’ll catch the rush hour.”
Rosie felt her heart sink to the bottom of her chest. She wouldn’t have minded being stuck in Huntsville’s version of ‘rush hour’ if it meant that she could pick up a few things. But no car meant that she would need to rely on someone to give her a ride, and she intended to keep a low profile.
A cheap car that would make it possible to get around, or a washing machine? Sigh.
“I’ll be sure and keep that in mind,” she said, trying to hide her disappointment. “Thanks, Ben. Appreciate it.”
“No problem,” he said, seeming pleased to have been of service. “Now food and household staples, on the other hand—I can definitely help you out with those.”
Maggie and Rosie left the Go-Go Mart almost twenty minutes later, each carrying two reusable shopping bags full of 'household staples.' They took a different route back to the highway to maximize their opportunity to explore. As they rounded the corner where Wallace Realty sat opposite the Town Hall, Rosie snuck a glance at the houses advertised in the windows.
There were some prettier places than Fox Cottage on Carol-Ann's listings, that was for sure. But Rosie had already started to feel an affinity for the rickety old pile that she couldn’t explain. Beneath the dust and the ghost-heralding cobwebs, the place was a sanctuary by necessity. It was a haven for her and her daughter when they needed one most, and she had decided to do all that she could to repay it for giving them a fresh start.
Once they passed the realtor, they came across the Kwik Kleen. The laundromat that was little more than a bricked-in hallway with a door, but they pressed their noses to the windows like it was Disney World. Somewhere to do laundry that wouldn't leave her hands raw! And somewhere to lug laundry, on foot, every few days. She sighed.
Okay, she told herself. The first thing I’m saving for is definitely a car.
“Mom,” Maggie said, interrupting her mental life-strategy planning session. “Look!”
Rosie turned her head in the direction Maggie was looking in. Tucked into a small back alley was a storefront painted with splotches of camouflage paint. Out front, there was some kind of rack that Rosie could only assume was for skinning dead animals, because there was a deer skeleton hanging from it limply, its bones bleached white by the sun. Her gaze jumped from the poor deer up to an imposing sign above the door.
OH SHOOT.
You got that damn right.
Dinner was a magnificent affair of jarred-sauce spaghetti with a bowl of iceberg lettuce that served as a green salad. Maggie was flipping a pale green piece of leaf over and back before she caught her mother’s eye across the table.
“Is Daddy coming to meet us here?” she asked. Though the question was commonplace, Rosie knew her daughter. She heard an undertone of fear in her daughter's voice and in the way she wouldn't meet her eyes. “Is this where we’re living now?”
Rosie’s food stuck in her throat. She’d kept them both busy on purpose that day. She expected Randy to start calling somewhere around mid-morning when he roused himself from his hangover in whoever’s bed he’d fallen into. She had kept her cell phone turned off, so he wouldn't reach her. She continued to chew to buy herself some time before answering and then forced herself to swallow.
“This is where we are living now,” Rosie said, measuring her words. “But he’s not coming to live with us, Pumpkin. It’s gonna be just you and me. Just us girls.”
Maggie was quiet for a moment. “Is that because he’s mean to us?”
Rosie’s heart felt like it weighed a million pounds. “Yes,” she said. “No more bad things are gonna happen from now on, okay?”
Maggie nodded, her dark hair bobbing up and down in her ponytail as she continued to eat her spaghetti. She had a halo of sauce around her lips, and Rosie wondered how on earth she could ask such wise questions and still manage to stain all her clothes with her dinner.
They cleared the plastic dishes they had bought at the Go-Go Mart, Maggie washing them clean while Rosie dried and put them away. Between snippets of conversation, she looked out of the kitchen window towards the twinkling lights of Mosswood.
“I’ll miss my old room and my friends.”
“I know, Pumpkin,” Rosie agreed. “But you’ll be able to make some new friends, and it will start to feel like home before you know it.”
“Except the air is nicer than home. It smells like Christmas here.”
Rosie laughed, a rich, deep laugh that crinkled the corners of her eyes as she hugged Maggie to her. “That’s because this is a pine forest!” she said, happiness bubbling inside her at the look of excitement on Maggie’s face. “Maybe at Christmas time we can go and pick out our tree from a tree farm. Would you like that?”
“Heck yes!” Rosie’s brow furrowed, and Maggie corrected herself. “I mean, yes, please – that sounds fun!”
Rosie’s face fell into a ‘that’s-what-I-thought-you-said’ expression. She took in a long breath and looked out of the window.
“Okay, then – we'll see.” She let her eyes travel over the landscape in front of them while Maggie left for her bath.
It was strange, she thought, as she pulled the plug out of the kitchen sink. She’d spent less than 24 hours in this place, and she felt more at home now than she ever had in her whole life. Despite the house needing more attention than she‘d bargained for, Rosie felt like she could make a life for them here. If she hadn't left the few friends she still had back home in Atlanta, the whole thing would have been perfect.
And then her phone lit up on the counter beside her. Before she could even question how it turned itself on, she saw Randy’s name above a text message. With shaking hands, she picked up her cell.
‘Guess u thought u could run out on me huh?’
Her breath was coming in short, ragged bursts. What if he knew where they were? What if he sent someone to come collect them—or, worse still, what if he came himself?
Rosie’s heart thudded like a jackhammer. She didn't have time to register a second thought when her phone buzzed in her hand. She yelped and dropped it onto the counter. It fell face up, taunting her with a second message.
‘U know u can’t hide for long babe.’
Panic rose in her throat, cutting off her breath. She glared at her phone. All she wanted was to keep Maggie safe. She felt hot, her skin prickled, and nausea threatened to overtake her.
The phone vibrated on the counter again, but this time there was no text message. It shook, rattling against the worn tile surface. And then, right before her eyes, the phone screen split. Spiderweb cracks burst outwards in repeated pops that made the phone jump across the tiles. As it continued to skitter around like a cockroach trying to outlive a blast of bug spray, she noticed battery fluid bubbling out on the sides.
“Shoot!” she hissed, lunging for a pair of kitchen tongs that she’d just finished drying after dinner. She used them to pluck the phone from the counter and toss it into the trash can, leaving a trail of iridescent ooze dripping behind it.
What the actual fuck?
Rosie swiped at the ooze with a kitchen cloth and then threw that in the trash too. She felt exhausted, her long dark hair falling over her shoulder as she leaned on the counter to steady herself. She breathed in through her n
ose and then let the air out through her mouth, feeling her presence of mind starting to creep back to her.
The sound of Maggie pulling out the bath plug dragged her back into the moment.
“Mom!” Maggie called from the bathroom. “Can you please comb through my hair?”
“Sure, Pumpkin,” Rosie answered a touch too quickly. She took another deep breath, and then another, letting the action flow through her, slow her heart rate, and calm her mind.
She knew that there were posts all over the internet about phones exploding, but there was no way to explain what she had just seen her phone do.
Chapter 2
The next day, Rosie and Maggie carried two full bags of laundry into town to the Kwik Kleen. Maggie sat on a bench across the street under a large tree and read her book. Rosie could see her clear enough from the laundromat and worked hard to calm her nervous maternal instinct. Maggie needed to develop and flex her independence, and she knew it, but she could do it where Rosie could keep an eye on her.
With a bag in each arm, she stepped inside Clean Clothes Heaven. The place was empty, and she sighed with relief as she burst through the glass door. It was colder inside, owing to the window AC units that blew thin strands of ancient plastic in a weak salute to summers in Georgia.
There was a small outdoor-style bench seat directly beside the AC, and then two washing machines and dryers side-by-side on each wall. They seemed to be facing off against each other from across the divide of cheap linoleum.
Rosie dumped one bag of laundry into the machine on her right and clicked the door closed. She turned to repeat the process on the left when the first door popped back open again. She grunted, reaching to close it with an ankle while stuffing her underwear into the other one. She wasn't quite coordinated enough and gave up, shoving her smalls into machine number two. She turned to check there weren’t too many clothes for the first one to stay closed. It would be just her luck to have brought three loads of washing to town instead of two.
But there didn’t seem to be a space problem. Rosie leaned closer to the inside of the machine, gave her clothes an experimental prod, and then closed the door. The second machine popped open behind her, slapping lighting against her derriere.
“Argh!” she yelped, almost jumping out of her skin before she turned to glare at the handsy washing machine. She frowned, placing a comforting hand on her butt out of habit. Of course the machines would be so old that they were practically defunct. Tutting with irritation, Rosie shoved her underwear into the second machine for the second time. She heard what she thought to be the beginnings of a now-familiar pop behind her, and her hand shot out to slap the door of the first machine closed before it could barf out her clothes again.
After a full two seconds of crouching with her arms outstretched, struggling to hold both doors closed at once, Rosie sighed. She couldn't put in her laundry soap, and she could not reach the change in her pocket, either. Resisting the strong urge to cuss, she let go of both doors and stood.
She dug into her pocket and braced herself for the pool of laundry about to flood at her feet. But both doors remained closed. With raised brows, Rosie held her change in one hand and the remains of her dignity in the other. She popped the changed into machine one, waiting for it to give her some sign that it was powering up.
It didn’t. It ate her change, and all but burped in her face.
Rosie did like to think of herself as a good person. She wasn’t overly devout, but she only swore when the occasion called for it. This occasion was starting to call for the more morally dubious parts of her vocabulary. Deciding to cut her loss and use one of the other two machines, she bent to retrieve her clothes.
The door of the machine refused to budge. She took a long, steadying breath, and then jerked on the door with abandon.
“Give. Me. Back. My. Clothes!!”
She managed to get it open, but not without sacrificing the skin on the knuckles of her right hand to the laundry gods. When two machines were finally humming along, she collapsed onto the nearby bench.
She picked up a copy of a nearby magazine to fan her sweaty self with. When at last her heartbeat had returned to normal, and the window ACs had cooled her sweat, she turned her attention to the magazine. The Herald of Hope was little more than a newsletter printed into a booklet by the local church. A power couple stood smiling on the front cover.
Rosie supposed he was good-looking if you liked thin, intellectual types. His wife looked manic in a wide-eyed ‘imitation of Jackie Onassis’ way. The pair of them wore matching aprons that said ‘Cooking for Jesus’, and a crowd of people flanked them, wielding huge smiles and kitchen utensils.
Rosie huffed through her nose.
She got up to have a look at an over-burdened community noticeboard on the wall. It was full of advertisements of puppies for sale, or for the Beep ‘n’ Sleep, or notices from the county. Then a piece of yellow paper with the words HELP WANTED in bold black marker caught her eye.
Seeking p/t employee for Mosswood Go-Go Mart. Must be able to work various hours as required. Previous experience not necessary.
The handwriting was messy and hurried, and the ink of the phone number scrawled along the bottom of the page still looked wet. Raising a brow at the prospect, Rosie tore the ad from the pin and stuffed it in the back pocket of her jeans. On second thought, she also tore a tab from a purple flyer advertising babysitting services.
Getting a job would take so much pressure off. She was already worried about what was going to happen if she couldn’t make next month’s rent. The cottage was coming along—at the very least, she hadn't run into anything else living there—but it would be good to buy a few things for the place if she could ever get a ride to Huntsville.
Then, once they settled and she was working, Maggie could do some chores to earn herself some pocket money. Rosie would never allow Maggie to be at the mercy of anyone else's charity like she had been. Particularly not anyone that didn't have much by mercy or charity themselves.
Later that day, Rosie admired the clean drapes she had re-hung when she heard a knock on her front door. Worry creased her brow, and her heart rate skipped up a gear. She could only think of one person who would come knocking on her door, and he most certainly wasn’t welcome.
“D’you think she’s home?” The voice was hesitant but feminine enough to allay some of Rosie’s initial panic. But Randy could be quite resourceful, and she wouldn’t put it past him to send others to do his bidding. She knew how his twisted mind worked.
“How should I know?” another person replied.
A third voice chimed in, “I hope she’s nice.”
Through the drapes around the front window, Rosie saw three well-dressed ladies standing huddled together on her porch. She considered pretending not to be home. The fewer people in town who knew she and Maggie were even living here, the better. She stepped back and listened.
“Carol-Ann Wallace told me this morning that she’s trim.”
“She lives here?” Rosie recognized the middle woman by her pert nose and coiffed hair from the front page of the Church magazine. “On the outskirts of town, surrounded by creepy woods? Sounds like she could use a little Jesus if you ask me.”
Rosie made up her mind to tiptoe back to the kitchen. But then, the church lady stepped over to the window and cupped her hands to look between the drapes—and right at Rosie.
“Well, hi there!” the woman chirped in a loud voice that she seemed to hope would drown out her previous bitchiness. Rosie groaned to herself. Why hadn’t she stayed in the damn kitchen like a normal person in hiding?
Resigning herself, Rosie went to answer the door. At the last second, she leaned to grab her keys so she could pretend to be on her way out if needed.
“Hi,” she offered the three women as she stepped onto the porch. Their eyes swept over her, taking in her messy ponytail, cutoff jeans, and a band t-shirt she’d had since high school. She felt as though she was being judged from
every angle – because she was – so Rosie mustered a forced smile.
“So glad we caught you!” the nosy window-looker sighed, sounding excited. “I’m Priscilla Bishop, but everybody calls me Prissy.” She pressed a hand sporting a huge sparkling wedding set to her chest. “This is Leanne Coombes,” she indicated a thin woman in a powder blue sweater on her right, “and this is Tammy Holt.” A shy-looking plump lady offered an awkward wave.
Prissy looked like an ad for a whitening toothpaste commercial, the way she wouldn't stop smiling. “Consider us your official Mosswood welcome wagon!”
She said it with such gusto that Rosie half expected there to be a trumpet fanfare in the seconds that followed. She lifted her arms to either side of her and let them plop back down, which was as much enthusiasm as she could muster.
“Consider me officially welcomed.” The women tittered polite laughter. “I'm trim, apparently,” she said as she offered her hand for a shake. “Though these days I mostly just go by ‘Rosie.’”
Prissy looked shocked for half a moment but recovered gracefully. “Oh, gosh! Color us embarrassed!” She shook her head at herself. “I guess that's why the good book warns us against gossipin’, isn't it?”
“Well, I won't start throwing stones if you don't,” Rosie offered with a small smile. She could not afford to make enemies here, even if her neighbors were nosy busybodies. But a little reminder of all the other things the good book warned against wouldn't go amiss.
Prissy laughed. “In a house this tiny, I don't guess you can afford to!”
“Yes,” Leanne said, gesturing at the grubby surroundings with a look of false pity on her thin face. “How are you finding the place? Looks like it needs a lot of work!”
“I admire your fortitude,” Prissy cut her friend off, shaking her head in mock admiration. “You’re clearly not afraid of a little elbow grease!”