Picnic in Someday Valley (Honey Creek #2) - Jodi Thomas Page 0,2
about. No, not quiet Brandon. He seemed to have turned into a six-feet-four tree wearing a Stetson. Silent. Waiting beside the table.
“Oh, all right,” she said as if they’d been arguing. “I’ll let you drive me home.”
A few minutes later as they walked past his pickup, Brand placed her guitar in his truck bed. The black case vanished in the shadows. “I never said I didn’t like you, Marcie. I’m older. You were just a kid.”
“I’m grown-up now.”
“I noticed.”
She thought of telling him they could easily walk to her trailer, but somehow after her day, riding home seemed a treat.
Brand was safe. She’d never heard a bad word about him. Marcie swore under her breath. Thinking Brand was better than most men she knew wasn’t saying much.
She gave him directions to her place back in the tree line near the end of the trailer park. She’d grown up here. Lived with her folks until her mom left when Marcie was seven. Then her dad ran the bar for a while until he got sick. She took over managing the place before she was out of high school. Ordered supplies. Cleaned the bar after closing time. Hired the help. Wayne had been a drunk who needed a job. She’d hired him to bartend with the understanding he wouldn’t drink on the job. He’d kept that rule until he finally bought the place. Now and then Marcie saw the signs he was drinking again, but she doubted the customers noticed.
Once she thought she had a chance of breaking free of Someday Valley. She’d left to make her way with her songs. Three years later she was back. Her dad was dying and her brother had disappeared. The only good news, she guessed, was that Wayne now let her work for him.
Wayne wasn’t a bad boss. He paid fair and she did most of the work while he drank away most of the profits, but he did pay her extra for singing. Twenty an hour and tips. Which tonight had been seven dollars and a quarter.
The lone yellow bulb blinked through the trees as Brand drove toward her ten-by-thirty home. The place didn’t seem so bad when she walked through the trees in the dark and slipped inside. But now, with the headlights blinking on the rusty sides and the broken window glass covered with cardboard, the small trailer looked like something abandoned to decay.
“This is far enough,” she whispered. “You might get stuck in the mud if you go much further.”
He stopped and got out.
She did the same. “I can make it from here.”
He started walking beside her. “I’ll walk you to your door, Marcie.”
Brand didn’t seem to notice the mud or the slow drizzle of rain. He was a man who worked outside. He was used to the weather.
She had a feeling she’d be wasting her breath if she argued about him coming to the door. She didn’t want to tell him that no man had ever walked her to her home. Boone used to call and wait at the park entrance until she came out. He’d said he didn’t want to get his car dirty on the bad roads, but Marcie always thought it was more that he didn’t want anyone to see him picking her up. She was small-town trash and he was Austin rich.
Marcie stepped on the first concrete block that served as a step. She turned back to Brand. “Thanks. I’m home safe now.”
He touched the brim of his hat and stepped away without a word. It was so dark in the trees that she wondered if he’d find his way back to his truck.
Marcie slipped inside and locked the door. Loneliness closed in around her like a heavy fog, making the air so thick she had to work to breathe. All her life she’d felt alone. Even when her mother was around she never had time for her. Or, when her father was ill and never left the trailer. And now, people only talked to her when they had to.
She curled up on her couch and just sat in the dark. There were times she’d had dreams. This place seemed a pod where she could imagine a future, as a singer in Nashville or a rich man’s wife. She could mold herself into anyone. All she had to do was break free of this place, and bloom.
She was almost asleep when she heard movement in the brush outside. A stray dog. Maybe a coyote looking for