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Jamie perched, rigid on the edge of her chair, a tissue clenched in her hand during her mother’s memorial reception at the Holiday Inn. Should anyone touch her, she was going to shatter like the time she dropped Mama’s china teapot. No one approached as if she was the invisible girl, the story of her life. If people ignored the problem, maybe it would go away. Jamie had decided—this was one problem she was going to make go away. The pieces of the plan fell into place while her step-father was making arrangements at the funeral home, a scheme to truly disappear and never be found. She and Mama had daydreamed about their getaway from time to time. Jamie would have to take matters into her own hands.
Her heart was a bird fluttering its wings against her rib cage and she folded her arms around her middle to hide the way her hands shook. Fear welled up with the sour taste of bile, hard to swallow but she choked it down, watching, waiting for her moment to slip out in the midst of the crowd when her step-father was occupied. Jamie couldn’t count on guests being a distraction to Owen Granville. Everyone knew he was a mean, hard man. The evidence had been plain on his wife and step-daughter even if people ignored what they saw.
No one talked to Owen. They kept their distance, skirting around him, staying on the fringe of the room as if he had the plague or some force field that warned others to listen to their instincts and stay away. Perhaps that had been the reason no one came forward to help Jamie and Laura over the years. They had been too afraid of the consequences. Tall, with dark hair, dark eyes, and a darker soul, he was a foreboding figure lurking at the corner of the bar. He was like an evil villain out of a movie, the kind Jamie and Mama would peek at from behind a pillow while giggling and munching on popcorn, when Owen wasn’t home.
A few men, that had the misfortune of being employed with the widower, paid their respects. They did so because they liked Laura. There was no love for Owen. They briefly acknowledged his presence for propriety’s sake. Giving a wave or a nod and hint of a handshake, they made a hasty retreat.
Jamie did not waste her own chance for freedom. She crept out of the banquet room as soon as her step-father was in deep, drowning himself in whiskey at the bar. The skies opened up, pouring down rain and drenching her, making her shudder until her teeth clacked in her head. She scurried by the side of the road, a slim, lonely figure in a black dress that was stuck to her skin with a riot of long, brown hair tangling around her face, tugged by the wind. Once she was out of sight from the hotel, she ran for all get out, not caring who noticed her or what anyone thought. Her stockings tore and mud spattered on her dress. Desperate to put as much distance as possible between herself and Owen, she paid her clothes no mind. She let the tears fall again, not even bothering to wipe them away as they mingled with the rain. Even though she had lost the one person that mattered in her life, a hint of hope flickered, buried in her heart. It was the longing for something more, something better, like Mama taking flight out of that chrysalis.
They lived on the outskirts of Albany, New York. The name of the town wasn’t important—it had never been home. It was a dirty place, overcrowded with people that rarely smiled, plodding to factory jobs with only their own troubles in mind. Never a kind word. No shoulder to lean on or helping hand. No one had ever paid attention to her in this place that was like a beat-up, worn-out shoe and this girl was ready to kick it off.
Jamie burst through the door of their poor excuse for a house, the door rattling on its hinges and a bitter draft chasing after her. It was a two bedroom cottage in disrepair on a dead-end road, just like Mama’s life. Things were not going to be the same for her daughter, she promised herself, angrily wiping tears aside every time they blurred her vision. She worked quickly with fumbling fingers that didn’t want to work, taking little to avoid Owen’s notice. She grabbed a backpack, stuffed in a few items of clothing, and the $200 Mama had hidden in a coffee can. That sorry amount had been their “Do Over” fund that they would take for a new start to be happy, just the two of them. Too late for Mama, a “do over” was up to Jamie. “And I’ll do it right, Mama, I promise,” she whispered fiercely as she pulled the door shut. She didn’t look back. There was nothing left for her there. Only bad memories with a few breaks of sunshine with Mama.
The bike trail ran behind the house. Jamie walked as fast as her feet would carry her, broke into a jog, pushing the past behind her. A mile later and she was at the bus station, heart a trip hammer, bent over from a stitch in her side, sucking in great gulps of air. She bought a ticket and boarded the bus, sliding down in her seat where no one could see her from the outside, her hair a curtain between her and the world. There was nothing sad about leaving her home of thirteen years. It had been a dark place where Owen’s shadow crushed her and Mama. It would not cloud Jamie’s skies any more.
The bus ride was a nightmare, spent constantly looking over her shoulder, seeing his face in every passing car. Four hours later, she got off at a truck stop in Scranton, Pennsylvania, heart in her throat, peeking over a hunched shoulder. If anyone bothered to look, they saw a quiet mouse of a girl who kept her head down with her eyes glued to the ground. Her clothes were dark, her features hidden behind a fall of hair, making her easy to forget. She scurried into the bathroom, shedding her black dress before stepping into the shower. She applied hair color with shaking hands and tapped her foot while she waited for it to take. She was too jittery to stay in one place for too long, afraid he would find her, somehow. Every time the outer door opened, she hunkered down, sure his face would be peering around the curtain.
When the new shade was set, she dressed in jeans, tall, black boots, and Mama’s “night out” shirt, low cut and of some kind of flimsy material. It floated around Jamie’s body and almost showed something but not quite. Make- up was last, something colorful and overdone to disguise a face that was never seen. She stared at herself in the mirror for a long time, reassuring herself that he would not recognize her. Night had skulked into that bathroom. Day, shining bright, would walk out. Satisfied with the stranger that stared back at her, she threw away any evidence, including her dress. When she stepped out, a smile was pasted on her face and her chin was tilted up high. Jamie even tried a little bit of a strut like she’d seen those girls do on the television soap operas. She boarded another bus. Four hours later, they crossed the Mason Dixon Line. Staring out the window as the grass grew greener and the blossoms began to pop on the trees, she opened the window and sucked in deeply, face pressed to the crack. The warm air washed over her and she breathed easy for the first time in too long. Let the thaw begin.
Deep in the Heart of Dixie Page 2
