The sun was fading behind the mountains when I trudged upstairs. A watery palette rippled on the reservoir. The Frolicking Moose might be a collapsing shack, but it had killer views of the lake.
I collapsed onto my bed.
My eyes slammed shut, bloodshot and aching. Everything smelled like coffee, and I hated coffee. For several moments, I lay there, breathing in and out. Scenes from the day passed through my mind like ticker tape. Dad narrated in the background.
That espresso machine is killer sometimes.
Steamer is fickle.
Who doesn’t love a good frappuccino on a hot day?
“Me,” I whispered. “I don’t.”
Bad day? Just think it out. Think it through.
A smile twitched at the edges of my lips. Such a Dad thing to say. He said it about everything, whether I was stuck on homework, having a boy issue, or trying to figure out which college to attend.
Think it out. Think it through.
You could take the man out of the Army, but not the Army out of the man.
When my eyes opened, they stared at a picture of Dad and Pappa on the front porch, coffee cups in hand. Pappa saluted me with his usual three-finger greeting as I took the picture. He died the next day, never waking from his usual afternoon nap. That was five years ago.
Groggy with sleep, I pushed off the bed, kicked off my shoes, and stripped out of my clothes. I ditched them in a pile with the rest of the dirty clothes on the floor. A hot shower relaxed my tense muscles, allowing my thoughts to flow more freely.
Following Dad’s advice, I thought it through.
- No employee, which meant more twelve-hour days.
- Shorter hours meant less money coming in.
- Lunch break shopping.
- The next credit card statement would be coming through again soon.
- Not a single soul that I really spoke to today.
Where had it all gone wrong?
By the time I finished, my postage stamp-sized bathroom had turned to steam. I emerged into my sticky-warm bedroom. It was always hot above the coffee shop. With my wet towel, I yanked my hair into a turban so it could dry and tried not to think about the unnerving quiet.
The sun sank beyond the distant mountains, coating the sky in burnt orange and carnation pink. I pulled the drapes, yanked on shorts and a tank top, and dragged a comb through my hair.
Signs of a messy life littered the room. Before Dad died eight months ago, it would have been immaculate. Dad always did military corners on his bed as soon as he woke up. Now necklaces, dirty clothes, and old magazines cluttered the space.
The one-room bedroom held what was left of my life. My brighter, happier, less lonely existence had been lost in the months since Dad’s untimely heart attack.
To distract myself from my depressing thoughts, I looked outside. My heart did a double take. Was that . . .?
Yes. Yes, it was.
The Viking had just stepped out of the grocery store and was scanning from left to right. He wore a black T-shirt and work khakis now.
Grateful for the anonymity of my upstairs window, I watched him cross the parking lot in the dusk. He was late twenties, possibly early thirties. Deep lines on his forehead meant he was a thinker, but he’d been easygoing despite my total mess this morning.
I spent so long studying him, lost in my thoughts, that I didn’t realize he was staring right back at me. With a gasp, I jerked back and shoved the curtain closed. My heart slammed in my chest.
When I peeked out again, he’d disappeared.
Acting as if I didn’t see the stack of bills on my desk that had arrived that afternoon, I pushed past the mess, tumbled onto the bed with my hair still wet, and fell into a restless sleep.
The wooden door to the Frolicking Moose Coffee Shop groaned open the next morning. With a quick kick, I propped it open to let cool morning air circulate inside. The OPEN sign flickered to life when I hit the switch behind the counter.
Still half-awake, I shuffled across the wooden floor that desperately needed a refinish and over to the drive-through window. A slight breeze whipped past me. The machines hummed a mellow greeting when I turned them on. After a thorough rinse that left espresso grounds bound into my skin, I’d been able to save the espresso machine from yet another espresso-doctor visit. Not to mention the two-hundred-dollar bill that would have choked off my food supply for the next four months.
My laptop sat on a nearby table, but I ignored it. No, there wouldn’t be an email offer waiting for me. Namely, a scholarship to the online real-estate program I had been hoping to interview for yesterday. Getting my license would help me recover what dropping out of college had done to my life.
Really, what had I been thinking? With the Frolicking Moose this hot of a mess, I wasn’t bound to recover from anything soon. And I wouldn’t give this place up.
I yawned, heading for the bathroom and ignoring the voice of panic that constantly rang in my ears. Dishwasher to run. Inventory to tally. Cups to stock. I really should have prepped last night, but I’d been too tired.
Halfway to the bathroom, a little scritch near the back door caught my attention. I paused, turned an ear toward it, and waited. A shuffling sound followed.
Was that . . . a whisper?
Quiet voices, if they were voices at all, came through the door. I reached into my office, grabbing a baseball bat I kept propped against the wall, and slipped toward the back. It was 4:45 a.m. Fifteen minutes before the rush of people commuting an hour to Jackson City. No one should be outside.
I threw open the door.
Two pairs of human eyes stared at me, startled.
I jumped back, screamed, and lifted the bat. Two girls were huddled on the rickety porch, peering up at me in wide-eyed shock. I’d startled them, too. One of them grabbed the other, shoving her away to safety.
“Don’t hurt us!”
Eternities seemed to pass as the voice registered in my brain, then traveled to my heart and almost stopped it. It happened the very moment I recognized the two faces. Those eyes.
Those emerald eyes.
I sucked in a sharp breath, the bat clattering to the ground behind me.
“Lizbeth?” I whispered. “Ellie?”
“Please,” Lizbeth whispered, her coppery hair limp around a pale, thin face. “Please let us inside.”
She was sixteen but looked closer to twelve right then. Her hair hadn’t been washed in what looked like weeks, and smudges gave her sallow skin a dirty tinge. Her shoulders trembled as she stood in front of her little sister—no, our little sister—Ellie.
Ellie, with her raven-black hair, verdant eyes, and wiry frame, looked so much like me despite being only my half-sister. She would be eleven now, although she acted more like an adult.
In a daze, I stumbled back.
“Yes. Right. Of course. Come on.”
Lizbeth whispered something to Ellie, who straightened. I’d never known Ellie to truly fear anything. Rage snapped like fire in her eyes, simmering into a slow-burning coal. Even when I’d seen her last at seven years old, on the second-worst day of my life, she hadn’t been scared. No, she’d been angry.
Not much had changed.
Lizbeth put an arm around Ellie’s shoulders and rushed past me into the shop. There wasn’t far to go. Right next to the back door were the spiral stairs. The hallway that led to my office emptied right into the main coffee shop. Lizbeth shuffled off to the side, eyes darting around. I shut the door firmly behind us. Not until I locked it did Lizbeth relax. Even then, she reminded me of a frightened rabbit poised to skitter off.
“Can we talk?” she whispered.
“Of course.”
“I . . . I didn’t know if you’d . . .”
Her uncertainty stung, but it wasn’t her fault. Lizbeth, Ellie, and I hadn’t seen each other in years. Not since Mama died. Even now seeing them brought flashes of Mama back, because Ellie looked just like her. The three of us hadn’t parted well after the service.
A thousand questions welled up in my mind, but I bit them all back. A healing split on Ellie’s lower lip didn’t need explanation. Nor did the slight discoloration around Lizbeth’s left eye.
Shoving aside my shock, I said, “Are you hungry? Let me close the shop and get you something to eat. Then you can tell me everything.”
Twenty minutes—and half the dry pastries in my display case—later, their appetite had finally slowed.
Ellie grimaced and held her stomach. Lizbeth hadn’t attacked the food with the same zest and seemed to be in less pain. She stared at me over the rim of her green tea. I picked a cheese stick apart without eating it, satisfied by the way it splintered into fragile strings.
My gaze dropped to the bruise around her left eye. There were probably others. Mama had married Jim when I was seven, but Dad kept me away from him. Something undeniably ugly had always festered in his eyes.
It had clearly broken free.
“We’re a good fit, doll,” Mama had said after first introducing me to Jim. “You don’t need love if you can find a good fit.”
The numbers told the real story. Lizbeth was born seven months after their suspiciously quick wedding. It had never been clear whether Mama loved Jim or a roof over her head more. He was sullen and quiet, like a storm cloud. Maybe Mama’s death four years ago had brought the hideous monster out.
“Jim?” I asked quietly.
A gentle breeze blew through the closed shop, stirring Lizbeth’s dirty copper hair. They smelled like forest and sweat and body odor. An angry scratch marred Ellie’s right cheek.
Lizbeth hesitated.
“What happened?”
Lizbeth and Ellie exchanged a glance. As usual, I couldn’t read Ellie.
“Dad got worse after she died,” Lizbeth said, her voice barely a whisper. “Not right away, but slowly. He just . . .”
“Lost it?”
Lizbeth nodded.
A rush of regret slipped through me. I hadn’t been in contact much, but I hadn’t deserted them, either. Christmas presents. Birthday cards. Occasional phone calls. Lizbeth had my number, and we’d text sometimes. That had slowly faded over the last year. Most of our contact had been obligatory.
“How often did he hit you?” I asked.
Lizbeth chewed on her bottom lip with a shrug of one far-too-skinny shoulder.
“Enough.”
I slowly and carefully reached across the table. She let me touch her chin. I tilted her head back so I could see the bruise in the growing light of day.
My heart cracked.
“This has faded. It must have been worse.”
She swallowed, the muscles in her throat working. Ellie sat next to her like a wooden statue, fixated on one point on the wall. I would have given the Frolicking Moose to know her thoughts right then.
“I don’t have it that bad, to be honest,” Lizbeth rushed to say. “I could have handled it, but . . . it’s Ellie I was worried about.”
Ellie’s jaw tightened. Her nostrils flared. She didn’t say a word.
Jim had always been more distant from Ellie. He hardly spoke to Lizbeth, but Ellie frustrated him constantly. Mom had always defended her, which had only isolated Ellie further.
“He was taking it out on you?” I asked Ellie. By some miracle, my voice remained controlled.
Ellie didn’t answer, but her eyes met mine. The steel I saw there didn’t surprise me. I’d seen it in Mama before. After the divorce. Scrounging for a job. When Jim muttered something rude under his breath about her body as she walked by.
Steel core.
Tears welled up in Lizbeth’s eyes and rolled down her freckled cheek. “He was going to kill her, Bethie. He lost it one night. Just snapped. So we ran into the woods. He followed. So . . . we just kept going.”
Her voice cracked. The sound of my childhood nickname carved a fissure deeper into my chest. Bethie. Just the way Mama used to say it.
If possible, Ellie tensed even more.
“He was so angry.” Lizbeth’s voice shook. “Throwing bottles. Screaming. I-I got her out of the barn, and we ran. We just ran. Ellie had ditched some clothes and shoes in a haystack a few weeks before, so we grabbed them and left. We never looked back.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“He hasn’t paid the phone bill in months.”
Another twinge of guilt stabbed me. No wonder I hadn’t heard from her in a while. I had wondered. I just, stupidly, hadn’t pursued it. Hadn’t thought to, either, with the Frolicking Moose occupying all my time.
I too easily recalled the way Jim would scowl at Mama when she got dressed up to go out country dancing with us.
“He’s just jealous, Bethie,” Mama would say as she brushed more mascara on. “Thinks I’m going to take you girls dancing and come home pregnant with another man’s child, or something.”
Lizbeth sank lower in the chair, frowning. “He’s not a bad guy. He’s just . . . he’s going through a lot.”
Ellie tensed when a car drove by. When it didn’t stop, she relaxed.
“Home is four hours from here,” I said, ignoring Lizbeth’s sharp tone. “That’s nearly two hundred miles. How did you get here?”
“Ellie is really good outside.” Lizbeth rubbed her thin, pale arms. “We’ve been walking at night and trying to sleep during the day. She’d start fires if we needed it to stay warm at night. We hitchhiked a couple times, but we mostly just walked.”
My eyes widened almost to the point of pain. “You hitchhiked? Do you know how dangerous that is?”
Lizbeth shrugged. Ellie shot me a perturbed glare, and I backed down. Comparatively, perhaps not much scarier than facing their drunk father. Almost two hundred miles of mountains and high desert separated us from Jim. The thought of them crossing it alone made me sick to my stomach.
It must have been really bad.
“Did you remember how to get here?” I asked Lizbeth. Ellie had never been here before that she’d remember, but Lizbeth had, when she was ten and Mama got a bug to see me. She drove up without warning, just popping up at the house where I lived with Dad and Pappa. She and Lizbeth took me to dinner, then drove back home.
But now I wondered if there was more to that trip than met the eye. Had she been escaping Jim?
“Barely,” Lizbeth said, pulling me out of my thoughts. “I knew the town name, but we had to figure it out by asking. I remembered the name of your dad’s coffee shop from the pictures you sent at Christmas last year.”
“How many days have you been gone?”
“A week.”
Ellie reached out, grabbing the leftover half of a croissant on the plate that I’d loaded for them.
“I’m sorry,” Lizbeth said, distress in her eyes. “We’re dropping in here so unexpectedly. But I thought maybe your dad could help us. He was nice to me that one time we came. Or maybe you could help us hide for a little bit while this blows over or . . .”
I swallowed hard. “Dad can’t help you. He died eight months ago.”
Lizbeth’s eyes widened, first with surprise, then possibly fear. Dad had been a large, intimidating man. Bigger than most, but kinder and softer than a butterfly. I suspected Lizbeth had always sensed something safe about him, even if he was just the father of her half-sister. Plus, Jim hated Dad. To the point of fear. Lizbeth had made a calculated decision in that brilliant mind of hers.
This girl was more than just books and science.
My throat ached. I wanted this conversation to be over with. Mostly because it proved just how awful a sister I had turned out to be. Amongst other things, like college student and coffee shop owner.
“You didn’t say anything,” Lizbeth said, hurt in her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell us he died?”
“I know. I didn’t say anything.”
Ellie lifted one eyebrow.
“Of course I’ll take you in,” I said, eager to turn the subject. “It will be nice to have someone else around here.”
“We won’t stay,” Lizbeth promised, resolute. “Dad might look here. We don’t want to bring him to you. Just help us find somewhere to go until this blows over, or something. Maybe I can find a job and—”
“Support two people on the income of a sixteen-year-old who should be in high school?”
“I’m smart enough to figure it out.”
The impetuous decision to leave Jim’s house had saved Ellie’s life, but to travel two hundred miles to a distant half-sister? Surely there was someone closer to them who could have helped.
Who could have called the cops, or something.
But then what?
A sudden tightening of her jaw told me that Lizbeth had already thought this out. Without me, they were headed straight to the foster system. The same system that had raised and destroyed Mama. If book-loving Lizbeth would rather brave two hundred miles of mountain wilderness on a chance my dad would help them out, it must be pretty bad at home.
Ignoring my rising panic about debt, bills, and credit card payments that would soon be turned over to a debt collector to harass me into the grave, I squeezed her cold, trembling hand.
“We’ll figure everything out. First, you two need a hot shower, some fresh clothes, and a really, really long sleep in my comfortable bed. The portable A/C machine kind of sucks, but it’s better than roasting to death. Sound good?”
Lizbeth sighed, gratefully transferring the position of leadership to me. She had always been a kind soul, born to speed through math equations, read books, and float on the idea of every romance she could find. Where Ellie had always thrived in rugged, unusual circumstances, Lizbeth preferred predictability.
“You did the right thing, Lizbeth.”
Ellie stared at me through Mama’s sooty lashes, her expression as hard as a diamond. Lizbeth paused, looking between the two of us.
“If Jim comes?” Lizbeth asked, voicing Ellie’s unspoken question.
“He won’t.”
“If he does?”
“I’ll kick him off my property and tell him to go back to the hole he was born in. Then I’ll call the cops.”
What a joy that would be.
The certainty in my tone seemed to calm Lizbeth. Ellie straightened, eyeing me, and fell in step behind Lizbeth as I led them into the hall and up the stairs.