by Jane Slate
“Do you know anywhere I can find work?” Grace questioned, tearing herself from her thoughts.
Miller always said it would be a cold day in hell before he ever let his old lady start working, but Grace didn’t see any other option. One of them had to do it.
Angie thought it over for a second.
“You know now that I think about it, I think Sue Ellen mentioned needing a waitress up at the Tavern.”
Sue Ellen was Angie’s lifelong best friend. A pretty brunette who owned two diners in Falls Creek. One on base and one off.
Grace smiled.
“Thanks Ang. If I don’t work, I’m not sure how we’re going to eat this winter.”
The next morning, Grace awoke to find Angie on the phone, huddled over a stack of paperwork on her kitchen table. She had her back turned and didn’t hear Grace enter. However, Grace could hear everything she was saying.
She was on the phone with a divorce attorney. Grace poured herself a cup of coffee and made her presence known, taking a seat at the table. She raised her eyebrows at Angie, who hung up the phone and placed it back on its dock.
“How did you sleep?” Angie asked nonchalantly, but Grace could see right through her.
“Ang, who were you talking to you?” she questioned, taking a sip of her coffee.
Angie sighed and crossed her arms over her chest.
“I just think you should consider your options. That’s all.”
She gathered a stack of paper and slid it across the table to Grace.
“I printed these out this morning,” Angie said with a nod. “Phone numbers of divorce attorneys. You won’t have to go to court or anything. There’s plenty of evidence for you to prove that this is a case of spousal abuse and –”
“Hell no!” Grace interrupted, speaking louder than she had intended to.
There was no way she was letting Angie sway her this time. Grace understood where she was coming from but if there was one thing that she had learned growing up in Falls Creek it was that ratting was strictly forbidden.
Grace had grown to hate Miller but he was still her husband, and she would do right by him. Even if he didn’t always do right by her.
“My god,” Angie exclaimed, shaking her head. “What has happened to you?”
Grace tore her eyes from her sister and slid the stack of paperwork back to her. As much as she appreciated her help, she wasn’t in the mood for a lecture.
“Grace,” Angie said evenly, pointing a manicured finger at the paperwork. “These are the best divorce attorneys in this side of the state. I talked to Steven and he agrees with me on this. We’ll even pay for it. You can get sole custody of the kids and move on with your life!”
“No!” Grace interrupted defensively.
She didn’t want to burn her bridge with her sister but she would if she had to. Falls Creek was a small town. Too small actually. The last thing Grace needed were rumors flying about her being an abused woman.
“And I know you, Angie. If you try to implicate me in this I will deny every word of it. Just drop it, alright? I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”
Angie sighed and slumped in her chair.
“And I cannot believe you told Steven about this,” Grace continued. “So much for sisterly solidarity huh Ang?”
“Fine,” Angie said, removing her glasses.
She pressed her fingers against her temples and rubbed them, taking a deep breath as she lit a smoke.
“Don’t say I didn’t try to help,” she said evenly, waving a hand in the air. “You’re so fucking stubborn, you know that?”
“You’re more like mom than you know. Do you know how many years she put up with dads bullshit before she left him? I mean, we were teenagers. But he was hitting her and cheating on her since we were kids.”
Cheating.
The word made Grace’s breath catch in her throat. Landon’s face drifted through her mind. She quietly seethed, feeling suddenly guilty.
Angie scoffed and waved a hand over her younger sister’s appearance.
“Jesus Grace! Look at you! Have you even looked in a mirror this morning?”
Grace caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window beside the table and cringed. Her face was one large bruise. She pushed her hair back away from her forehead and studied herself.
“Christ,” she whispered.
She looked much worse in the daylight.
With a sigh, Grace reflected on a time before the beatings had begun. A time before Miller. A time when her life still had light.
As a child, she had been care free and wild. Her level of bravery made her popular with little boys. She was a tomboy by definition but she never noticed it until she was a freshman in high school. While other girls her age busied themselves with school dances, make-up, and celebrity crushes, Grace spent her time with the wrestling team and the boys she had come to know as brothers.
It was where she had first met Landon. An athletic, military obsessed boy with a mean streak and a soft side. Grace silently obsessed over him all throughout her formative high school years but he never seemed to return her feelings. At least not openly. He was two years older than her and as much as it pained Grace to admit, he didn’t seem to look at her as more than a gawky little sister.
At least, not until it was too late.
Then came Miller.
Grace was on her way home from school when it happened.
She dropped her books on the ground in front of the bus she was boarding and he stopped to help her. When he bent down to grab them, their hands touched and their eyes met. Aside from Landon, Miller was the most handsome boy Grace had ever seen, with full lips, dark eyes, and a full head of honey brown hair. He was the archetype of what every young girl lusted after.
And just like that, Grace was hooked.
Miller swept her into a whirlwind romance greater than anything Grace had ever known. In those first few defining years, he was nothing but a gentleman. He was kind and attentive. The epitome of everything a man should be.
He was everything Grace hadn’t known. Admiration, respect, friendship.
Love.
Long gone were the insecurities that had filled the empty spaces of her life. She fell in love with every part of Miller. Even the things that would be perceived as flaws.
And years later, when the day came that he asked for her hand in marriage, she accepted the proposal without a second thought.
In retrospect, it was the worst decision she ever made.
Shortly after their wedding, Miller began to change. Not drastically by any means, but enough where it was noticeable. Slowly, Grace began to withdraw from her friends and family and she was also no longer allowed to spend time with her friends of the opposite sex. Their presence made Miller feel insecure, though he never used the word.
Grace told herself that his irrational jealousy and clinginess were normal. She told herself that a lot of things were normal. And when the day came that she finally noticed his temper for what it was, she brushed it off. And when they would argue and he would hold her just a little too tight by the arms, she would brush that off too.
She managed to convince herself that it was just how Miller loved.
No one approved of them. Not Grace’s mother and her new husband. Not her father and his secretary, the woman responsible for ruining her parents’ marriage. Not Angie. But there was nothing any of them could do.
In the midst of trying to find answers to questions she didn’t understand, Grace managed to convince herself that it was the rings that had ruined them. The second they were on their fingers, the spark that had ignited their relationship lost its fire.
The priest who married them had ranted on and on about how the simple silver bands symbolized eternal commitment. And yet, all Grace could feel was trapped by them.
The first time Miller ever laid his hands on her, she shook it off as a fluke. The second, third, and fourth times were worse. Now, he beat her for everything no mat
ter how meaningless.
Grace reached down and caressed the tiny stamp a few inches beneath her belly button. It was still there. It always would be. Grace cringed at what it represented.
Miller’s permanent ownership of her.
She reflected on how infuriated Angie had been when she first saw it.
“How could you do such a stupid thing!” she exclaimed. “Getting a man’s name tattooed on you? I mean, come on!”
But what was done was done.
“We can’t keep letting that asshole do this to you,” Angie interrupted, taking a long drink of her coffee. “It’s not right.”
Grace tuned her out and stirred a spoonful of sugar and cream into her coffee mug. Nothing Angie was saying was false, but that didn’t make it any easier of a pill to swallow.
“If you aren’t going to do it for yourself do it for the kids.”
That was it. Grace had heard enough.
“Please Ang,” she begged, running her fingers through her hair.
“Just drop it, okay? I promise I’ll consider it.”
Angie didn’t look entirely convinced but she dropped the subject anyway. She stood up and gathered the paperwork, setting it on the kitchen counter.
“I talked to Sue Ellen for you,” she called over her shoulder as she began to prepare breakfast.
“Yeah?” Grace questioned, remembering their conversation from the night before.
“Yeah, she’s going to give you an interview. Next Sunday.”
Grace smiled then grimaced at the sharp pain that seared through her battered face.
“Thanks Ang, I owe you one.”
Angie turned around and set a plate of eggs down in front of her sister.
“Let’s just hope your face is healed by then,” she said dryly, preparing a plate for herself.
Grace took a bite of the food. She wondered how the children were holding up and felt a pang of sadness flutter through her. The clock on the wall struck eight A.M.
“I should be fine,” she said.
“You know,” Angie began, taking a seat with her plate of food. “There comes a point where you have to move forward. You can’t stay in the same place, the same situation forever. Not without regressing.”
Therapist psychobabble, that’s all it was.
Grace knew her sister only meant the best, but she couldn’t stand being lectured. Hearing someone else vocalize the thoughts that kept her up at night just didn’t sit well with her.
She gave Angie a weary smile and muttered something soft in agreement.
Chapter Ten
A week later, Grace’s body was still a battered mess but her face had healed enough for her to attend a job interview at Sue Ellen’s Tavern. There was still some discoloring along her forehead but it had yellowed enough for her to cover it with make-up. Her eyes had also healed but for a small gash along her upper lip.
She looked at her reflection in the rearview mirror of her car and sighed, smearing a dab of foundation along the bruising on her temple. She brushed her hair into her face to cover it.
This was as good as it was going to get.
She felt like a nervous wreck but the interview went off without a hitch. Sue Ellen was so impressed by Grace’s long history of serving that she tossed her an apron and allowed her to start on the spot.
“You’re a natural,” she said with a smile, nodding at a table where a group of leather clad patrons had just sat down. “I can tell. Now, go fourth and work your magic!”
Grace smiled to herself and grabbed a stack of menus and a pad of paper and pen from behind the bar. She greeted a table of men with a smile. It was then that she noticed the Peligros patch on their cuts and sucked in a sharp breath. They were a club Miller and the rest of the members of the Sons made a point of avoiding.
Grace recognized one of the men as Joaquín, President of the Peligros. He was the kind of man no woman would want to stumble upon by herself late at night. At six foot four, he towered over the rest of his men even sitting down, and his stare made Grace feel immediately uneasy.
“Evening,” he said with a nod and a snicker.
Grace cringed as he glanced down at her nametag, his beady eyes lingering on her breasts. “Grace.”
“That’s a pretty name,” he added.
“Thank you,” Grace replied automatically. She uncapped her pen and pressed it against the notepad in her hands.
“What can I get you?”
“Well hold on just a second,” Joaquín interjected.
“How are you doing tonight sweetheart?”
Grace sighed and shifted on her feet, running a hand through her hair. Of course he had to be one of those customers. The kind who forced socialization and expected to operate on a first-name basis with every moderately attractive waitress. The kind that made her breathe a sigh of relief the second they paid and left.
“It’s going fine,” she responded dully, trying her best to keep her customer-service voice intact. “How about yours?”
“Better now that I’ve seen your pretty face,” Joaquín said with a smile.
His men chuckled. Grace rolled her eyes as a blush began to cover her pale skin. She couldn’t help but feel flattered. A compliment was a compliment regardless of who was giving it. It had been a long time since she had been called pretty and in comparison to the other girls who worked at Sue Ellen’s, she certainly didn’t feel it.
They spent their free time between customers crowded around the front counter, bragging about being hit on while they counted their tips. There was Clara, a skinny blonde with large breasts who accentuated them by wearing low-cut shirts. Robin, a vivacious brunette who couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred and fifteen pounds wet. And Lisa, a quiet but drop dead gorgeous college student who could have easily been a model.
They were the type of women capable of making anyone feel inferior in their presence, and Grace was intimidated to say the least. They were the usual targets for flirtation from male customers.
Not her.
Sure, Grace was attractive. There was no denying that. But since she was surrounded by women akin to Playboy bunnies she found it hard to see the beauty in her pale skin, unruly red hair, and lackluster clothing.
She wasn’t unconfident, but pretty was not the adjective she would have used to describe herself.
Not now.
Too distracted by her inner dialogue, it occurred to Grace that she had neglected to respond to the compliment. Regardless, her shift was ending soon and she wasn’t in the mood for mindless conversation.
“What can I get you?” she questioned again, looking up from her notepad at Joaquín and his men. She ignored them as they laughed and got straight to the point.
“We have great pies.”
Joaquín stared Grace down intently, inspecting her like a predator going in for its prey. Finally, he answered for himself and his men.
“We’ll have a couple omelets,” he said, the workings of a Spanish accent surfacing in his voice.
Grace swallowed hard and avoided eye contact with him as she jotted the order down on her notepad.
“That all?” she questioned without looking up.
She felt a palm make contact with her ass and jumped. If it wasn’t her first day on the job, she would have reacted. Instead, she sauntered away and handed the order over to Sue Ellen as the men whistled after her.
“Do you mind getting someone else to take that table?” Grace asked her.
Sue Ellen looked over at the group of rowdy men and raised an eyebrow, immediately understanding Grace’s request.
“They come here a lot,” she replied. “That going to be a problem?”
Grace hesitated. If Miller found out she was working at a place with Peligros presence, he wouldn’t be happy. But she needed the job and couldn’t afford to pass it up because of a few customers.
“No, its fine,” Grace assured Sue Ellen with a forced smile. “I’ll handle it.”
While the Peligros�
�� food was being prepared, Grace walked away to tend to a few other tables, temporarily ignoring the noisy bunch in the back of the Tavern. It was quite busy for a Sunday. A few stragglers came in and sat down in a booth and Grace greeted them with a smile, handing them menus.
She could hear Joaquín and his men banging their fists on their table jovially as a story was told. When their food was up, she brought the steaming plates over to them without any added pleasantries, pouring them each a mug of coffee as they stared at her leeringly.
About an hour later, Joaquín approached the counter to pay, but instead of a card, he opted for Grace’s least favorite form of payment. Large bills that forced her to count out the change in front of the customer.
Joaquín placed a crisp one hundred dollar bill on the counter and furrowed his brows as he noticed something in Grace’s expression change.
“I always pay in cash,” he said with a wink as his men began to pile out of the door. “Can’t ever be too careful.”
Grace nodded and began to count out Joaquín’s money, eager to finally end the interaction. When she handed it to him, he grazed her hand and pressed a piece of crumbled paper into her palm. She looked at him in confusion but he simply smiled.
"You enjoy your night, Grace,” he said, letting go of her hand.
Grace swallowed hard as he backed towards the door, his eyes never leaving hers. She gave him a tight smile as a feeling of uneasiness fell over her. When Joaquín was finally gone, she listened as he and his men revved their bikes and drove off. Then, she looked down at the note and unfolded it.
A twenty dollar bill fell into her hand and she stuffed it into her apron with the rest of her tips, skimming her eyes over the haphazardly written words.
If you ever want to party…
Beneath Joaquín’s writing was a phone number. Grace rolled her eyes and shoved the piece of paper in her purse.
Chapter Eleven
As the work day passed, the last of Grace’s resolves began to dissolve. She greeted her last few customers cordially but didn’t put in the extra effort that she had the first few hours of her shift.
