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Heather
As the month wore on, I settled into a routine of small-town life. And the more I got used to going into town, I adapted, or readapted, to the rigmarole of being in Burton.
The longer I was out of Chicago and away from David’s reach, the more that things seemed to relax. My anxiety lessened. My paranoia of being followed was reduced. After almost two and a half years of stress, everything was finally as it should be.
That didn’t mean that everything was rosy. That no issues popped up with the people here. Still, I got the curious looks and sometimes the dirty scowls. I wasn’t under any illusion that Burton would suddenly accept me and make me feel welcome, but I was getting better at not letting it bother me.
It was what it was and I couldn’t change a thing about how drama ruled in this town. I had no power over the strength of years-old grudges or biases.
Nance and Fergus noticed, though. Janelle, too.
It was clear that they’d been picking up and the low-lying undercurrent of antagonism pointed my way.
At lunch, one afternoon at the diner, Nance didn’t seem able to hold her tongue any longer.
“Just what are you looking at?” she snapped at Ashley, who was sipping a frou-frou concoction of pumpkin spice.
Ashley raised her brows. “Are you talking to me?” She pointed an orange and black nail at her chest as she looked around.
“Yeah, you. What is your problem?” Nance folded her hands together and placed them on top the table where our empty lunch plates remained. “I’m getting sick of you looking this way and smirking like something’s crawled up your ass and festered.”
Other diners chuckled and giggled, overhearing. Of course, they overheard. This tiny diner was literally the only public gathering place. It was here or the bar.
“Sheesh, Nance,” Janelle chided with a slightly shocked but amused expression. “Where’s your manners?”
“Hey, I’m not on the clock,” Nance said.
Fergus sighed and sipped his drink. “I am so jelly. I want menopause so I can have free rein to be a bitch when I wanna.”
I laughed, shooting him an incredulous look. “No way. Embrace your femininity without that.”
“I mean it. I’m sick of her looking over here like a prune face,” Nance insisted.
Ashley huffed and turned to whisper to her friends at the table. It was such a pathetic reminder of my high school lunchroom days that I rolled my eyes.
“It’s me,” I explained to them.
“Well, yeah, it’s you,” Nance said flippantly. “She’s got an issue with you.”
“Hmm-mmm,” Fergus agreed. “So does that old couple who comes in to cash their check every week and triple check that I ‘did it right.’” Now he rolled his eyes.
“What’s up with that, Heather?” Janelle asked. She wasn’t mean or nosy. Just curious. “I’ve noticed some of the same thing here and there.”
I shrugged. “I used to be the black sheep of town.”
All three pairs of brows shot up.
“You?” Nance said. “Get outta here. You’re too damn quiet and shy to be a nuisance for anyone.”
“I guess that would make her a sheep though,” Fergus said. “The shy and quiet part.”
“Sheep are quiet?” I challenged. “You ever hear them bleating and bahhing for food?” I laughed once.
He winced. “I’m not a farm boy.”
“Yet you moved to Iowa,” Janelle teased.
“I just thought it would be a cute little town.” He shrugged. “I thought we were talking about Heather.”
“How are you the black sheep?” Nance asked. “Were you a troublemaker when you were younger?”
Janelle laughed. “Heather? Ha.”
I shook my head.
Nance pointed toward Ashley. “You steal her man?”
I shook my head again.
“Tipped the wrong cow?” Fergus asked.
“I’m not really a farm girl, either,” I told him. Even though I’m renting a cabin on the ranch...
“Well, what’d you do then?” Nance frowned. “There’s gotta be a story.”
“Nope. No story. I was just...born.”
They all stared at me, nonplussed.
“Yeah, we need a lil’ more intel than that,” Fergus said.
I sighed. “Have you ever seen someone, or a couple of people, and you just think wow, they should not be allowed to procreate?”
They all nodded.
“You get a vibe and just know they’d be terrible people to raise a kid?”
“Ah,” Nance said.
“Your parents?” Janelle asked.
“My parents,” I said, nodding, “weren’t great people.”
“How so?” Fergus asked, getting excited to gossip more.
“They weren’t parents. They didn’t nurture or care. They most attention they gave me was in telling me how to fake an injury or sob story so they could get a discount or benefit they didn’t deserve. Free shit. Coupons. Waived meals.”
“Whoa,” Janelle said.
“They were Burton’s mooches. Liars. Cheats. And they complained, nonstop.” I winced as I dared to worsen their opinions of me by sharing this, but like I’d come to understand, it was what it was. “Being associated with them was the stain I had to deal with. Through no fault of my own.”
“Damn,” Nance said, “that’s a crappy way to live.”
“It was. They’re both gone, and it took me a while to realize I wasn’t a cruel or bad person not to grieve them. They weren’t Mom or Dad to me. They never were.”
“Did they neglect you?” Janelle asked. “Like children services could’ve been called?”
“No. No way. They wouldn’t consider giving me up. I was their excuse, their prop, to ask for money. To solicit for cash to ‘pay for my food.’ To bribe people into giving them breaks.” I sat up, feeling freer to unload all of this. It was possibly the first time I ever had to strangers, or to people who hadn’t lived here forever. I was in charge of telling this narrative, and that had power.
“They fed me. They did the bare, bare basic to make sure I was alive, right? But past that, nothing. No love. No support. When I was really young, I noticed how people treated them in town. Like they expected the worst of them, and that was what they gave them. They complained without cause. They schemed how to take things that wasn’t theirs. They looked for loopholes, usually at the cost of making up a woe-is-me tale about me.”
“Damn,” Nance said.
“When I was five, I realized that when people talked about my parents, they were right. It never occurred to me to feel defensive when someone called them cheats. Because I saw how they were. I never wanted to argue with someone when they said they were lowlifes. Because I saw how they were. They were mean, talking about everyone behind their backs. They were lazy, strategizing how to get handouts just to avoid getting a job.” I shrugged. “When I was six, I wrote a letter to Santa asking for a new family. When I was ten, I blew out a candle on the cake I made for myself, wishing I could run away.”
“No wonder you couldn’t wait to get out of town,” Nance said.
I nodded.
“Didn’t anyone in town intervene?” Janelle asked. “Someone had to notice.”
“Oh, they noticed,” I said.
“And no one cared to help?” she asked.
“No one wanted to deal with my parents, besides, I learned to just not attract attention. To be quiet and mind my own business until I could leave.”
Janelle shook her head.
“And because I was their kid, they assumed the worst of me, just through association. When I was in sixth grade, I offered to tutor younger kids at the library, and they said no, because I clearly had to expect something in return for volunteering. When I was a freshman, I tried to babysit at a neighbors’ house because they had a death in the family, and they said no, I had to be trying to sneak into their house to steal stuff for my parents.”
“Wow,” Fergus said.
“When there’s election years, the parties and candidates always fight, right? Criticizing the others. Being petty. You know? Then when someone targets a candidate’s child, there’s an uproar. When everyone says, oh no, kids are off-limits. It’s not their fault they were born into that family.”
All three nodded.
“Yeah, that logic never applied to me. I was judged through association, no matter how helpful, obedient, or nice I tried to be. So I gave up. I read a lot to escape. I became a loner. I studied my ass off to get scholarships, and I just gave up on trying to make anyone in Burton like me.”
“But you’re back,” Fergus pointed out.
I nodded, sighing with the satisfaction of unloading like that. It was cathartic, and with the sympathetic looks these three gave me, I felt good, confident that they wouldn’t be suckered into Burton’s collective opinion of me.
“Why?” Fergus asked.
“Ooookay,” I said. “Enough about me.” While if felt good to tell them about my past so they wouldn’t be curious about why townsfolk disliked me, I wasn’t ready to talk about what made me leave Chicago. I wasn’t in the mood to relive the horror of what David did to me.
Nance nodded. “Yeah. No more badgering her. She explained.” Patting my hand, she smiled. “And you’re not alone, kid. You’ve got us now.”
I smiled. That truly meant a lot, and I wasn’t nervous to take stock in what she said.
“It doesn’t bother me as much anymore,” I admitted. “Hard lesson in life to learn, but I’m getting better at ignoring all of it.”
Roarke, though, was the outlier. He was the one person in town, or out of it, that I struggled to dismiss. I’d calmed down from the shock of how I’d woken up with him, but I couldn’t shake off these thoughts of what-if. What if I hadn’t run, what if I’d stayed like that, in his bed, for even just a few more minutes.
No. Not going there.
I hadn’t figured out a way to shut off this desire that flared up whenever he was remotely near me, but that didn’t mean I had to worry about acting on it. Keeping my distance was working so far, and I’d stick to that.
After work that day, still floating on the happiness of shedding the truth to my new coworkers and friends from the bank, I wasn’t quick to be defensive when Eric approached me. As I walked to my car, he came from the post office, flagging me down to chat.
“Hey, Heather.”
I smiled. “How’s it going, Eric?”
“It’s going.” He still wasn’t a man of many words, but he showed his capacity for carrying on more small talk than he had previously.
Huh. A fleeting thought hit me that maybe my return was a good thing for him. That he liked having something like family around.
“I was wondering though,” he said after ten minutes of enjoying the late afternoon sunshine near my car. “How come you came back from the city?”
Just like that, my guard went up. When Fergus tried to get an answer for why I was here again, I deflected and didn’t reply.
With Eric, I clammed up as well.
“I’m just saying. You know?” He rubbed the back of his head, that nervous tell. “I can see how you’d rather stay away from here and all, but...”
“Nah.” I shook my head as I opened my car door, ready to remove myself from the direction this conversation was going. “I’m starting to see that Burton’s not as bad as I always thought it was.” It tasted like a lie, but only partially.
Either way, I wasn’t prepared to explain my return yet.
Or maybe ever.
