Rebecca preferred Amanda open, instead of the fake smile she showed to the rest of the world—especially her father. She knew this was serious, was closer to Amanda than anyone, though that wasn’t saying much.
She’d have to push Amanda a little harder. Rebecca focused her gaze, stood her ground. Amanda sighed. She redid her ponytail, pulling her short blond hair through a rubber band. “I went for a drive, okay? It’s not like I can get any thinking done around here. I get interrogated the minute I walk through the door.”
“Only when you’re hours late. It’s a first for you.” Rebecca walked to the sofa and propped up on its armrest, a hard edge under the corduroy fabric. “What is it, Amanda?”
“I got a call from a telemarketer.”
“A telemarketer.” Great. Rebecca highly doubted Amanda’s beleaguered condition was the result of a nuisance salesman, or woman. Couldn’t Amanda see someone cared about her and wanted to help?
“Right,” Amanda continued. She seemed oblivious to Rebecca’s concern. “I heard my name and I was sold. Well, almost.” Her dim, blue eyes lost more focus. “But should I buy it?” She glanced at Rebecca, then bent down to take off her work boots. “I gave up at Kenosha Pass and headed back.”
Rebecca did the math. “You drove an hour into the Rockies, and another hour back, all because of a call from a telemarketer?”
Amanda glanced at the clock above the television. As if she needed the wrench-shaped hands to tell her anything she hadn’t known, Rebecca thought. But Amanda could’ve been lost in some very heavy thoughts. “I guess it was that long, wasn’t it? Pretty late.” Her pale blue eyes gained some clarity as they met Rebecca’s gaze. “Don’t you have school tomorrow?”
“Don’t you have work?”
“Right. Thinking about telemarketers can wait until tomorrow.” Amanda headed forward but stopped short when her eyes fell on something. Shadows collected in her face as her eyes narrowed. “What are those?”
Rebecca followed her cousin’s gaze to the pair of high heels. She’d planned on wearing them during a presentation tomorrow but knew Amanda wasn’t interested in Rebecca’s schooling.
Amanda’s eyes stayed fixed on the heels, but they began to lose focus again. “Do me a favor and keep them off ‘til you get out of the apartment. I hear enough of their clicking at work.”
Rebecca stared at the heels and arched a brow. How could a pair of shoes cause so much harm to their relationship?
Amanda’s pack was left at the door as Rebecca watched her cousin cross the sparse living area. Once she reached her bedroom door, Amanda’s blue eyes dropped to the heels. “I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”
“What? The telemarketer?”
Amanda’s blue eyes whipped up and Rebecca watched them re-adjust to present time. “Right.” Her cousin closed the door.
More like yeah right. Rebecca pushed off the armrest and headed back to her room. By her desk, she considered her school books, and then glanced over at her bed. Maybe she should follow her cousin’s example and hit the hay. But how could she? What did Amanda mean? Something had really shaken her, and it wasn’t some telemarketer.
Rebecca’s brow furrowed. Had someone tried to sell her high heels? She shook her head and sighed, knew the high heel thing ran deeper with more complicated roots. Maybe, someday, Amanda would tell her about what had happened in Bayfield. Then Rebecca could finally be useful to her, be a friend first and a cousin second. But what did it have to do with the phone call?
Nothing, the logical lobe of her brain answered. It was a false path she shouldn’t try walking. They’d had a late night. Who knew what anyone was saying? Amanda would be her chipper self in the morning. It was merely a telemarketer, after all. Right?
~ ~ ~
What’s with the strap? Amanda thought as she felt the vinyl band pressing against her chest. When did beds require seat belts? Hers seemed to be a special model.
Somehow, her bed had lifted Amanda to a sitting position without her realizing, and the ground rolled by underneath it.
No, no. It was making sense. Now she wished it hadn’t.
She hadn’t been in the passenger seat of this car for years, or ever, back in reality. But here she was, stuck as this concocted memory poured out from the moral side of her brain. She knew where this headed.
You can do this, she repeated. Ride it through. It’s not your crash and death, just your fault.
Road noise, indistinct chatter flowed over her eardrums. Amanda lowered her gaze, stared at her grease-stained hands. It didn’t help. When the chatter got louder, she had to turn and look.
Danielle.
Amanda waited as the driver, Danielle, took shape. Every minute detail came, from the blue mini-skirt to the dyed hair. Danielle, who was a freshly turned senior in high school, tormentor of sophomores, had said brunettes really did have more fun. A scented dolphin hung from the rearview mirror, factory-manufactured, salted water smell. She was such a fake.
Just like Mom.
The same showiness didn’t end there. Danielle had a fresh manicure, too. Amanda eyed the non-chipped, glossy fingernails of the one hand resting lightly on the steering wheel. Danielle babbled non-stop at her cell phone. A high-heeled foot tapped on the rubber floor mat.
Amanda forced her gaze forward. In the gray, plastic dashboard before her there was a glove box. It wouldn’t do her any good. Fighting was useless. Previous times, she’d yelled and waved. She’d gestured desperately, shouted at Danielle to stop the car, but Amanda had been left to ride it through, always invisible, never numb.
Guilt pressed heavily against her chest. She’d made the air conditioning inoperative in Danielle’s precious cutie MacClip. It should never have crashed due to lack of cool air. Amanda had been fatally wrong.
“I know, right? Oh, hang on a sec.” Danielle wedged the phone between ear and shoulder and gripped the wheel with two hands. “What’s going on?” Her normally tormenting, frigid voice squeaked. If she was pale, the makeup covered it. But her eyes widened with panic.
Amanda concentrated on calm. She tried to ease the cold vise on her heart, but it only clamped tighter. Her pulse leapt in desperation.
The phone slid off Danielle’s shoulder, dropped into the center console. Her breathing turned frantic. There was no way she could’ve seen this coming. The fake brunette never before had a need to understand the machine pushing her to speeds over seventy miles per hour. Now, with a sharp curve ahead, things had changed.
Please. Let the car work this time. Put it back together. I can’t fix the past. Stop!
Danielle screamed.
Amanda squeezed her eyes shut. Her breath quickened as sweat trickled down like tears. The vehicle punched through a guard rail.
Being low to the ground, it didn’t roll. It slid down the slope sideways, the driver’s side leading. Amanda saw through Danielle’s eyes. It was the whole massive cottonwood. Then it became the trunk seen through the window. Now it was the bark in painful detail. Hollow steel slammed into rooted wood.
Bam!
The explosion of airbags overtook the sounds of a metal cage crumpling against a tree. Amanda was knocked back into herself.
The seat belt didn’t restrain Danielle from premature impact with the deploying airbag, because she didn’t wear it. She’d said often enough how they ruined the look of her outfit. Amanda hated her thoughts. She slammed into the passenger door, wanting to get out before the handle even unlatched. She pushed against it, elbows locked.
Click.
Stilled, she waited.
Click, click.
Suddenly twelve years old, Amanda felt trapped all over again and a new form of scared. Someone she loved was leaving. She pushed her stubby-fingered hands against wood, listened at her bedroom door, but the clicks faded.
<
br /> No! Mommy, I need you.
Voices filtered in beneath the big, wooden panel. “—A great opportunity . . . have to leave tonight,” Mommy said from down the hall in between noises of drawers sliding open and close.
The clicks started again. They tapped quickly toward Amanda’s room. Amanda gazed up at the door knob, waited for it to turn. Mommy would explain. It’d be simple, no longer scary.
The clicks went past the door. The little girl’s nose picked up thin wisps of cucumber and soft soap as they crept in underneath the door.
“You’re not even going to say good-bye to your daughter?” Daddy asked.
Mommy’s shoes stopped clicking. “I gave her twelve years of my life. What difference will five minutes make? She’s probably asleep. I don’t have time for this.”
And the shoes clicked again, for the final time.
Amanda held her princess doll tighter, its hair rough against her cheek. She tucked her feet under and sat on the floor. Her eyes blurred with tears.
Darkness enveloped her as the feeble illumination from her night-light faded.
She lifted her head slowly, startled at the high heels, the legs to the skirt, and the blouse. But it wasn’t Mommy’s face. The lady pointed at her, looking away. She joked to others about her, made fun!
Her princess doll fell away as Amanda’s fingers dug into the rug by her bed. Why couldn’t she make them go away, make them leave her alone?
Fingers dug into shorter carpet, rougher and thick. Where was she now?
Off her bed, in her apartment, came the quick answer. Apartment. In Denver, Colorado. She was awake. Reality settled around Amanda. And she knew one other thing for certain. She hadn’t dreamt of the crash, or her Mom, in years.
So what made this night special? After a normal ten-hour day at work, she’d gone to Dad’s. There she’d heard Ryan’s voice. She’d picked up the ringing phone, and he’d been on the other end.
It’d been years since she’d last talked to him. He had to be the reason. But why, Ryan? Why did you have to call, start this all over again?
She coughed on a sob.
How could she face work now? Seeing women in skirts and hearing their high heels click would be torturous reminders of her guilt and inability to be valuable to a mother.
One co-worker in particular, Stacy the receptionist, would click her way out to the shop for sure. She’d do her flirty thing with William, who worked in the bay next to Amanda’s. She’d flick her hair and smile, pretend interest in him so she could find out how much longer until her car was put back together.
All the while, Amanda would be choking on Stacy’s perfume, cucumbers and ammonia, or whatever chemical one shouldn’t mix with bleach.
Once Stacy got what she wanted, she’d tap her way out of the shop because, as she’d said, she couldn’t stand unclean areas. Until the next time she needed something. Then Amanda would hear her clicks and her girlish laugh with the spike in it all over again.
At a car dealership, there were plenty of over-dressed women. They really did find her odd, gave her looks even while voicing admiration for putting up with all the boys. It’d be better if it were only her and the machines. She’d get a job done. She would fix the cars, make them right again.
No matter how many—a part of her brain reminded her—it won’t undo what you’ve done. The thought immediately lurched physically to her twisted gut. She hadn’t meant it, not fatally. But nothing would ever change what had happened.
The numbers on the digital alarm clock glowed red, the only light in the room. It was a blood light. How would she ever handle tomorrow with those girls?
Chapter 3
Late the next day, Amanda leaned over a repair order as an air gun hammered in the bay next to her. The gun’s hits, and misses, were a soothing sound to her ears.
She wouldn’t be hearing any high heel clicks for at least the rest of the day. With each tap that morning, memories had clamored closer than a safe distance. What was Ryan calling for?
Enough of that, she ordered herself. Get to work.
She focused on her paper, her arms resting on the podium’s cool metal as she scribbled out the last of her notes for the silver sedan parked behind her in her bay.
A car alarm sounded. The horn cut in like a massive alarm clock.
“The horn works!” cried a tech from the other side of the shop.
She rolled her eyes but never looked up from her pen marks. A liquid sweetness filled the dusty air as antifreeze drained in a neighboring bay. From the corner of her eye, she viewed a pair of black slacks and shoes approaching. Her service advisor, Ben, the middle man between her and the customer asked, “How we looking, Amanda?”
She shot him a smile. “All I got left is the paperwork,” she said.
“Good. I can get rolling on that and cash out the customer while you bring the car around.”
“Right.” She nodded once.
Her paperwork went through the time clock. The machine that never stood the attention of a rag stamped out her hours for the brake job.
She flipped to Ben with paper in hand. “Just leave me time for a test drive.”
“Always.” He glanced down at the repair order and shook his head. “You make it too easy with your handwriting.” He clucked. “Cleanest I’ve read.”
“Anything to keep my favorite service advisor happy.” She beamed at him. It didn’t matter that he was the only service advisor for their team.
He twitched up half a smile with a wink then turned back to the vacuumed and air-conditioned customer area. His safety glasses had never left their post on top of his gel-set, black hair.
Someone could take a die grinder to her mouth and wouldn’t be able to scour off her cheery expression. It happened to be her deflect tactic, and today she relied on it desperately.
After stepping her way through two car lift pillars to the driver’s door, she grasped the handle but paused and looked over the car’s roof.
The shop’s garage door was stuck open. It was another of Denver’s hot spring days and even though the air outside was scorched with heat, the flow of it through the shop airbrushed away the top layer of technician sweat. A man squatted on the parking lot curb between two parked cars. She crinkled her brow. Who would wear a hooded sweatshirt on a day like this? He must be getting cooked on that black asphalt.
But the figure never wavered as his shadowed face stayed on her. She looked around the shop, noting how its population was thinning. Was it that late already?
She shrugged. It gave her the chance to snag more gravy work—easy repairs that padded the paycheck nicely. After one more glance outside, she stepped into the car.
The engine turned over. She shifted the transmission into reverse. The car rolled out of her bay and her foot pivoted to the brake. The pedal fell away from her. Where was the pressure! She pumped it again and was like stepping into mush. No! She found the lever to her right and yanked up the emergency brake. The car’s momentum was caught, inches from another car’s bumper.
Her leg muscles un-hardened. Her heart eased from its shallow, quick beating to a hard and steady thud against her chest. Scanning her side of the shop, she saw no witnesses. Thank goodness; she’d screwed-up when no one was watching. She stared at the car’s dash. The steering wheel looked like a suitable place to bang one’s head in frustration. Easy. Don’t want to hurt the customer’s car.
How could she forget! It wasn’t like this was her first brake job. Always, she drilled into herself. ALWAYS, work the brakes before pulling out. Have to get brake line pressure back to normal. She thought she’d had that habit down by now. Until that—she looked to her right through the passenger door glass. The squatting figure had left. Good. Auto repair work wasn’t a spectator sport. Fans could be a distraction like he’d
been, and whatever he was interested in obviously wasn’t her.
She gave the pedal a few good pumps and then maneuvered the car out of the shop. Cutting along the shaded side of the building, she rolled up the driver side window as she headed for the dealership’s exit. Along the way, she craned her neck and searched the parking lot. If that man was still around, he kept to lurking between cars, because she never spotted him. She eased out of caution, focusing on work instead, and counted out the right spot to merge onto Broadway—the main strip along Dealership Row.
Strawberries and cream assaulted her nose, sweet to the risk of developing diabetes. She eyed the air freshener, wishing she could turn it down like the classical music on the radio.
Let’s get this test drive over with.
She turned off into a small neighborhood and took the car through the loop, testing the brakes for sound and vibration, noting if there was any unwanted drifting in the steering on the straightaways, and whether the driver could possibly lose control. Ugh! She shook the latter thought away. A couple turns brought her back into the dealership’s service drive.
She shifted into park then turned off the ignition. Stepping out and slipping on her safety glasses, she strode over to the podium where Scott tackled paperwork armed with an oversized calculator under one hand.
“So,” she started and after a glance from the corner of his eye, she smiled then asked, “What’s next?”
“How about permission to clock out and go home for the day?” he asked.
“Hmm . . . pass on that.”
“Don’t you have a home life?”
A Running Heart Page 3
