There is an old saying that a personâs past will eventually catch up to them. Mine was a bit slow because it didnât find me until I was forty-five years old. When it did, it didnât tiptoe up and give me a discreet tap on the shoulder, either. A gentle, Remember me? Of course not. My past rolled down Prichettâs Main Street in broad daylight. In a black stretch limo.
It was a good thing that my two best friends, Elise Penny and Annie Carpenter, were with me or I probably would have hijacked the next pickup truck lumbering down the street and ended up somewhere in Canada.
Annie, whoâd been catching snowflakes on her tongue, grabbed my hand and held on. Annie may be twenty years younger than me but what she lacks in age she makes up for in wisdom. Sheâs the kind of person who always seems to have one ear tilted toward the sky, as if sheâs expecting at any moment God is going to whisper something in it. And Iâm convinced that He does on a regular basis.
I tried to work up enough saliva so that I could talk, but my mouth had gone as dry as the fields in the middle of July. If you live in Prichett long enough you begin to think in farm metaphors. It started happening to me about three years after Iâd moved here, and I look at it as a permanent conditionâlike crowâs feetâ¦or cellulite.
âIt canât be him.â There it was. My voice. Well, a reasonable facsimile anyway. It must have come out at a slightly higher pitch than normal because a flock of blackbirds in the tree over our heads began to rustle around and protest. âSomeone must have rented the limo for an anniversary or something.â
There was no other reason that a limo could be stoppingâ¦right in front of the Cut and Curl. Which happened to be the beauty salon that I owned.
âIf there was an anniversary, it would have made the marquee,â Elise said. She grabbed my other hand and leaned forward, staring intently at the sleek black vehicle that was now purring alongside the curb.
This was wishful thinking on Eliseâs part. Her name had been on the marquee for three months now. The marquee was a sacred relic and it hung off the old theater on Main Street like an arm with a compound fracture, announcing all the news that Mayor Candy Lane decided was noteworthy.
Elise had been a contestant in the Proverbs 31 Pageant and had recently won the state title. So far, sheâd set a record for having had her name on the marquee the longest. Because she didnât like the attention, I knew she was secretly hoping that someone else would have something happen to them that was noteworthy enough for the sign to be changed.
âNot possible,â I muttered, staring at the ground. I was beginning to have memory flashes. You know, those little things buried so deep inside that only a reality explosion will bring them to the surface.
And right now I was remembering that Phoebe Caine, a former acquaintance in my life D.A.âDuring Alexâwould spill Everest-size amounts of delicate information when bribed with Godiva chocolates. And this was the woman Iâd spoken to on the telephone a month before, making her promise that she wouldnât tell anyone that Iâd called.
But this had nothing to do with the limousine. Did it?
âYou better go talk to him. Heâs looking this way,â Elise murmured.
âWhoâs looking this way?â Denial. Itâs a pitiful thing. Youâd think after this many years, I would have figured that out. But no. It had become my first weapon of defense.
âAlex Scott.â Annie said the name so matter-of-factly that she could have been talking about Mr. Bender at the hardware store instead of one of the biggest names at the box office.
There was no way he could recognize me at this distance. Iâm a hairstylist. I see my reflection in the mirror all day and itâs nowhere close to the one that looked back at me when I was in my early twenties. More wrinkles. Not to mention the rest of me. There was more of that, too.
I had the weird, surreal feeling that I was watching one of his movies. The driver, who looked like he was moonlighting from his other job as an NFL linebacker, got out and started unloading luggage from the trunk. Luggage. People were starting to pause in midstep and stare. Limousines in Prichett just werenât that common. Now if someone had parked a combine in front of my shop, no one would have blinked an eye.